Overview

Summary

Are you an experienced gardener, now ready to discover a new garden and take on a new challenge? This might be just the role for you. If you’re a dedicated and enthusiastic horticulturist, who's keen to make a difference, then we can offer you invaluable experience and development within one of the National Trust’s much loved historic gardens at Florence Court.

What it's like to work here

Set against Benaughlin and the Cuilcagh mountains in County Fermanagh, Florence Court is the National Trust’s most westerly property. As Senior Gardener you will manage an Assistant Gardener and a team of dedicated volunteers taking the lead on the future development of several areas of the garden including our Walled Garden, recently restored Glass Houses and the Pleasure Gardens.

You’ll also be responsible for helping with excellent communication of our conservation work to a wide range of audiences, both new and existing, through events and outreach. You’ll share our common cause and build relationships with the local community, proudly representing the National Trust through sharing and promoting the work that we do.

You will appreciate the need to bring in income, so your business ideas will play an important part in the team’s success.

What you'll be doing

As Senior Gardener, we’d like you to lead by example, lead from the front. You’ll demonstrate exceptional gardening skills, which others can follow and learn from. You’ll understand how to help the team manage their daily workload, and you’ll give inspiring and practical training to new staff and volunteers. You’ll build positive working relationships across the entire site. And you will delight in talking to people visiting the garden, telling them its story and answering their questions.

Now that we have completed the restoration of the Kitchen Garden Glass Houses we are looking to the next phase of development, you will take the lead on this and create a garden focused on the visitor offer while taking horticultural presentation to the next level. Being passionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the varied plants within the gardens, you will be just as enthused about telling the garden stories to our visitors. In support of this, you will work with site teams to plan a programme of activities in the garden.  

You will set the direction of how we care for these wonderful gardens, write, and develop both short and longer-term garden management plans and you will deliver these plans by line managing and successfully leading our skilled and dedicated gardens volunteers each day. You'll lead by example, have exceptional gardening skills, understand how to manage the workload for this team, and deliver exceptional training to new and established volunteers. You therefore must be a great communicator and all-round people person; your interpersonal and leadership skills will be just as important as your technical skills in this role.

Please also read the full role profile attached to this advert.

Who we're looking for

We’d love to hear from you, if you’re:

• someone who combines practical experience in horticulture with appropriate qualifications
• used to supervising others in a similar role 
• highly knowledgeable about plants
• confident in using and maintaining garden machinery, including chainsaws, tractors, hedge-trimmers and mowers (both walking and ride-on)
• aware of relevant health and safety legislation and practices