It has been a joy to see the spring flowering bulbs starting to appear across the College site this year. As we enjoy the displays, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the work involved as well as finding out more!
At the end of November last year our Grounds & Gardens team led a student planting day where the team worked with volunteer students to plant a few thousand Narcissus obvallaris (common name Tenby daffodil) behind the football pitch towards Madingley Road. We are hugely grateful to all the student volunteers who turned out to help with the November planting! This was part of a larger bulb planting project that the team undertook in the Autumn/Winter where they planted 18,000 Narcissus obvallaris along the Madingley Road side of College.
The bulbs planted with the help of our student volunteers were additions to the approximately 25,000 bulbs the Grounds & Gardens team had planted the previous year. They also planted a number of other bulbs around the College particularly in the hostel gardens. These included 5,000 Hyacinthoides non-scripta (native English bluebells), 3,000 Tulipa sylvestris, 250 Camassia leichtlinii ‘Alba’ and 1,000 Narcissus ‘Canaliculatus’. These are mostly spring flowering bulbs! An interesting fact is that the squirrels in the garden of 68 Storey’s Way were rather partial to the Tulipa sylvestris bulbs – quite a number of them we could see had been dug up and eaten!
Future plans are to continue planting bulbs around the site especially along the perimeter path at the top of the site towards the chapel that will join up with the fantastic display of bulbs in the copse. The team are also intending to increase bulb planting in the hostel gardens, especially the gardens of 68 and 70 Storey’s Way.