As a new high-end housing development takes shape on the site of the former Bristol University Botanic Gardens, David Clensy meets the former university head gardener who is helping to "take the gardens on to their new life"
FOR Robert Webber, this is more than just a garden ? as he surveys the five acres of carefully manicured landscape in Leigh Woods, there is a paternal pride in his eyes ? for more than 20 years, this garden has been his life's work.
As head gardener at the University of Bristol's historic botanical gardens, he led the team of gardeners who maintained and developed this rich living learning resource ? the grade two listed gardens in North Road.But in 2005, when the university sold the historic site, and relocated much of its collection of rare plants to its new botanical gardens on the Clifton side of the suspension bridge, Robert decided that after 20 years in Leigh Woods, he simply couldn't leave the old garden behind.
"It's a very human story I suppose," he says. "I was simply too attached to the old place to leave it. So I made a career decision ? I left my job with the university, and became a freelance garden designer."Since 2005, as the plot of land has changed hands a couple of times between property developers, Robert has remained onboard as the resident gardener."I suppose each new owner had enough faith in my experience to keep me on," he says.
Now, the latest owner, Devonshire Homes, is busily working on the construction of a set of exclusive family homes on the former botanical gardens site ? and Robert's role has evolved, to try to nurture the garden, and the many rare species of plant and tree that remains, to be sympathetically incorporated into the new development.The gated-community will feature six large new-build four and five-bedroom family homes, while the former coach house on the site is being turned into three family properties.With prices starting at ?1.375m, the development is targeting a high end market. But the gardens originally belonged to the imposing Bracken Hill House ? which is also being separately redeveloped.
Built in 1886, Bracken Hill had been the home of Melville Wills, part of the tobacco family and a noted benefactor of the university. The university moved its botanical gardens here in 1959. The gardens had begun life in 1892 at a site in University Road, Clifton ? near Royal Fort House, and later moved to Tyndall Avenue.But for 46 years, Bracken Hill was synonymous with the botanical gardens.Robert arrived as a gardener in the mid-1980s, after an extraordinary career change. Having read history at Reading University, Robert embarked on a 10-year career in the City with institutions such as Hungarian International Bank and First National Bank of Boston.
But inspired by his childhood ? growing up in Kew Gardens, where his civil servant father was given a grace-and-favour house for his family ? he decided to leave behind the riches of the banking life for a career in horticulture.
"I suppose I had been influenced by growing up in Kew Gardens," says Robert, who now lives in Southville. "I naturally learnt a lot about the scale of planting in a big garden, and my parents were keen for me to develop a career in horticulture. But I rebelled, and became a banker."It was only a decade later that I realised that actually I should do what I most enjoy, and get back into gardening."He studied professional plantsmanship at Cannington College for three years before joining the University of Bristol's Botanic Garden, and seven years later was made head gardener ? a position he held for the next 13 years."You get to know every plant in the garden in that time," he says. "These days I know the place inside out.
Even after the university left, and took many of the plants with them, I was able to renurture the garden ? many of the rare species regrew from the roots and seeds that were left behind.
"But also the larger plants and trees could not be moved to the new location, and some are very rare indeed. For example we have a few examples of mature sorbus bristoliensis ? the Bristol Gorge whitebeam, which only grows in the Avon Gorge and Leigh Woods, and there are just 100 specimens growing naturally in the wild.
"Which is one of the reasons why Robert will be kept on as the gardener for the new development. Beyond a series of small private gardens, each new-build property will have access to a private community garden ? the great sweep of woodland that formed most of the old botanical gardens.Residents in the converted coach-house will have their own private garden ? based around the ornamental lily pond, which dates back to the 1920s."There are five different types of water lily in the pond, some of them quite rare," Robert explains.
But in some areas Robert has replanted areas to make them less "botanical garden" in their approach."For example, in one of the beds we had 113 different species of the same type of hebe plant ? you simply don't need that sort of academic variety in an ordinary garden, so I thinned them out a bit."But I am very attached to the garden, and any changes I make are carefully thought through," Robert says."After all the generations of gardeners that have worked here, I feel quite honoured to be the one who gets to take the garden on to its new life."
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