Learn about the beautifully coloured, fragile rarities that are English Tulips, largely preserved by members of the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society, from Teresa Clements, former Secretary of the society, and now Chair of the RHS Bulbous Plants Committee.

This talk takes place in the Peter Sowerby Building at the Yorkshire Arboretum, but can be streamed via Zoom.

Booking Information

Gardens Talks cost £10 to attend in person or £5 to attend via Zoom. Please book by selecting your preferred option below:

The Yorkshire Arboretum’s Garden Talks series is back for 2023.

We are glad to be joined by Katy Merrington with ‘The Hepworth Wakefield Garden – transforming an unused piece of land into a beautiful free public garden.

The garden at The Hepworth Wakefield art gallery has been designed by internationally renowned garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith and opened to the public 2019. Katy Merrington will speak about the creation and development of this beautiful new public space, along with inspiring ideas for creating year-round interest through perennial plantings.’

This talk takes place in the Peter Sowerby Building at the Yorkshire Arboretum, but can be streamed via Zoom.

Booking Information

Gardens Talks cost £10 to attend in person or £5 via Zoom. Please book by selecting your preferred option below:

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled, we apologies for any inconvenience

Guest poets Will Kemp, Katy Skipwith and Chris Bridge (Arboretum Trustee and Volunteer) will be reading poetry in the stunning surroundings of the arboretum.

Katy Mahon is a Northern Irish musician and poet brought up in London and living in York. She has taken courses with Helen Ivory through the National Centre for Writing/UEA, and Gallery Press's ‘Gallery Goes Workshopping’ with Grace Wilentz. During 2021, Katy collaborated with English seascape artist Carolyn Coles for York Open Studios, and she was a reader for the Quiet Compere tour. In 2022, Katy was New Irish Writing’s featured poet in the Irish Independent, and her debut chapbook Some Indefinable Cord was published. Her poems have appeared in various Irish and English journals, most recently HOWL New Irish Writing, Bad Lilies and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. Her pamphlet can be purchased through Some Indefinable Cord KATY MAHON | Hybriddreich Ltd.

Will Kemp has won several competitions, been well-placed in others and had four collections published as well as many poems in various journals including: Ambit, The Guardian, Iota, Magma, The North and The Rialto.  He teaches Creative Writing at York University and judges the Keats-Shelley Prize.  For details, visit: www.wkemp.com

Chris Bridge is the Arboretum’s Poet in Residence. He has three published collections: Walking Through, Tracks and Of Trees and Time in The Yorkshire Arboretum. He specialises not in winning but in being the runner up or highly commended. He has achieved this in the Stanza competition, Hippocrates  and the National Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Pennine Platform, Tribune, Poetry Nottingham and Other Poetry.

Owen is Assistant Registrar of the Tree Register and few people know this country’s trees better. He’ll tell us about finding and measuring the great trees of Yorkshire that have achieved championship status.

This talk takes place in the Peter Sowerby Building at the Yorkshire Arboretum, but can be streamed via Zoom

Fee: £5 Online, £10 In Person

To book, please telephone 01653648598

The Yorkshire Arboretum’s Garden Talks series is back for 2023.

On Thursday 13 April, John Grimshaw will deliver a fascinating talk about the garden in Ray Wood ‘A Plantsman’s Paradise’.

The garden in Ray Wood, within the Castle Howard grounds but curated by the Yorkshire Arboretum’s staff and volunteers, is an under-visited gem. John talks about its creation by Jim Russell, its restoration and maintenance and the rich diversity of plants that grow there.

This talk takes place in the Peter Sowerby Building at the Yorkshire Arboretum, but can be streamed via Zoom.

Booking Information

Gardens Talks cost £10 to attend in person or £5 via Zoom. Please book by selecting your preferred option below:

Debs has been a committed organic gardener for many years, first at Osborne House and later as Head Gardener at Highgrove for HRH The Prince of Wales. Now living on the Isle of Wight she will use these experiences to tell us about the principles and practice of organic gardening. This talk will be given remotely via Zoom.

In the 1800s the Backhouse family of York were amongst the world’s leading nurserymen, with extensive production grounds, partly now occupied by West Bank Park, Acomb. Gillian Parker has been researching the dynasty for some time and in this talk will tell us about their tree-growing business - which did particularly well in Queen Victoria’s jubilee years.

Ben is Head Gardener at York Gate, at Adel near Leeds, the flagship garden for the horticultural charity, Perennial. The body of the talk will describe the layered planting through the seasons and how York Gate has evolved from a small family garden to one open to the public from April to September. Full of interesting plants and the development of a wonderful Yorkshire garden.

Fully Booked

John Grimshaw describes how the arboretum is managed for both the mostly exotic woody plant collection and the natural biodiversity found on the site. The arboretum is one of the richest locations for native plants remaining in the Howardian Hills - and with the plants come the insects, birds and other animals.

This talk take place in the Peter Sowerby Building at the Yorkshire Arboretum, but can be streamed via Zoom. Book your ticket below:

Chris Bridge, Trustee and Poet in Residence will give a talk that is also the launch of the Arboretum’s new publication. This is part guidebook, part history of the Arboretum, part evolutionary chronicle and part meditation on trees and time. The evening itself will be a mixture of talk and poetry reading. Your ticket gains you access to the Arboretum from 6pm so that you can walk round the Arboretum before the talk begins.

The talk/poetry reading will be in the new Tree Health Centre from 7pm.

A copy of Chris’s book, Of Trees & Time, is also included in your ticket purchase.

Seamus, who is Curator of the National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh, in County Wicklow, Ireland, will tell us about his visits to the mountains of northern Myanmar (formerly Burma) following in the footsteps of Frank Kingdon-Ward and other plant hunters of the past. As a hotspot of plant diversity this area has an incredibly rich flora, a magnet for botanists - but it is easiest to learn about it from the comfort of one’s own home!

This talk will be given over Zoom. To book, please click below. A link will be sent to you on the day. Please sign in to the event by 7:15pm.

Our first talk of the 2022 season will be by Mark Weathington, Director of the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina, speaking about this remarkable collection and its work. As a ‘horticultural hotspot’ the JCRA punches above its weight promoting good plants and horticulture in the south-eastern United States, and even a virtual visit is bound to inspire anyone interested in exciting plants.

This event is now fully-booked.

In the light of climate change and the growing problem of tree diseases John discusses the need for expanding the range of trees used in amenity, woodland and forestry settings in the UK. He views diversity as being the key to a thriving treescape for this century and beyond, illustrating the talk with examples of trees already growing in the UK with potential for much wider application, and considers the important questions of provenance and adaptation for resilience in the years ahead.

New pests threaten global biodiversity and food security resulting in substantial economic costs reported to be in excess of £75 billion annually. Neil will talk about the process of introducing an exotic species for classical biological control of non-native invasive tree pests in England. Neil will use the recent release of a parasitoid wasp for the management of Oriental Chestnut Gall Wasp, and preparing for the management of Emerald Ash Borer in the event of its arrival in the UK, as examples.

Initially we try to eradicate new arrivals that could cause substantial damage to our environment and industries, but if this is unsuccessful and the pest establishes we then need to suppress its population and movement around the UK.

Classical biological control, the introduction of a natural enemy associated with the pest from elsewhere in the world, is recognised as a key strategy to manage invasive insect pest populations. However, introduction of an exotic biological enemy is subject to regulatory measures, including a rigorous risk assessment and review process which may take years for approval.