Stanmer Park Teacher Resources

Exploring One Garden Brighton at Stanmer Park

In the palm of your hand – the tropical VictoriansHistory, Science and Geography, age range 4 to 11. Cross curricular links: DT*.

The session In a nutshell1. Why were the Victorians fascinated by

rainforests and bringing the tropics back home? 2. Where can you see an example of Victorian

planting in your local area? 3. Can you create your own bottle garden or grow

a lemon or orange plant from seed?

Learning outcomesI will have learned about:• the life cycles of rainforest plants

• a historical building in my local area

• Victorian gardening techniques and how we can learn from them

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

This is a classroom based activity, and you will need:

• tropical fruit

• bottles

• compost

• miniature house plants

• orange and lemon pips

• paper cups

• plastic bags

• tablecloths

• trowels

• spoons

• long sticks

(Teachers - you will need to collect andprepare equipment and resources in advance)

Stanmer Park – what’s the story?

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The Stanmer estate is huge. It covers 500 acres, with parkland, farmland, woodland and a village street.

Stanmer gets its name from the stony pond (from the Anglo-Saxon words meaning stone (stan) and pond (mere), which can still be seen there today.

Stanmer Park was bought by the Pelham family in 1713. The manor house was built, along with landscaped gardens and a walled garden to supply the house with food.

The Walled Garden is now a visitor attraction and education centre called One Garden Brighton. It’s free to visit and hosts a variety of education days and workshops for all ages.

During the Victorian era, Stanmer Church was built next to the original pond, and also a village of 18 houses to house the workers. Water for Stanmer house was provided by means of a seventeenth century well house (or horse gin engine) adjacent to the house, a donkey wheel and a water catcher.

In 1952 the Palm House was built, alongside the entrance to the walled garden.

It was built by Brighton & Hove Council to house tropical plants and was designed using a Victorian Palm House look and feel. It would originally have been heated. Gardeners were employed by the council to look after and maintain all the plants which formed the Stanmer Nursery and also provided plants for all the parks across the city of Brighton.

It is one of only three surviving Palm Houses built in this style by Hartleys in the 1950s. The other two are at The Living Rainforest and Marwell Zoo.

Stanmer is still a working estate and village. People live and work there today and a park restoration project will be completed in 2021.

We are very lucky in Brighton to have an example of a country estate which is open to visitors and still has all these original features.*.

How to run the sessionResearch the Stanmer Palm House. Look at the images of the Palm House*.

FACTS:

• It is leased and managed by Plumpton College* and owned by Brighton & Hove City Council*

• For many years it was a tropical house but now we use it as a cold Palm House which means it is not heated

• The coldest recorded temperature in there is -11˚ C

• Stanmer is colder than Brighton because it is inland and in a frost pocket – we use the Palm House to grow plants that can be grown outside in milder Brighton

QUESTION:

Is it Victorian?

ANSWER: No. It looks Victorian, but was built in 1952 for Brighton & Hove Council.

* Visit Stanmer Learning online to find all the pupil activity sources and weblinks. These pages also contain further reading and the specific National Curriculum links for the resource.

FAMOUS FACTS:

• The elegance of the structure has attracted various uses – performing plays, filming and photographing bands, exhibiting art and sculpture, fashion shows and photo shoots – even Jeremy Paxman and Newsnight were broadcast live from it in September 2013*

• A theatre piece called ‘Palm House’ was created specially for the space*

• There is Palm House Artwork from Gin Rimmington Jones* - what do children think of the pictures?

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These are gelli prints of palm house plants by artist Seana Mallen*.

Research the plants grown in The Stanmer Palm House and find more about each one*.

CHALLENGE 1

Which countries do they come from and what do they look like? Use the RHS website to look up each plant*.

CHALLENGE 2

Can you find one plant linked to a horse’s head, one that is spineless, one that is poisonous, one that sounds like a heavenly instrument and one that you can eat the fruit?*

PALM HOUSES:

Read this wonderful account of being a gardener at the Palm House from 1982. https://gardenworld.proboards.com/thread/2470/old-nursery

Read this description from our current Senior Gardener at One Garden Brighton about how we ‘put the banana plants to bed’ when it is cold*.

How to overwinter the Palm House banana plants from Senior Gardener Peter Wood

We cut the stems down to about 50cms high, heavily wood chip mulch around the bases to protect the roots and insulate from the cold. Then wrap the stump with fleece or dry straw to insulate it then cover with an upturned bucket to keep the crown dry. This is all done around the time of the first frosts and will stay covered until spring when the likelihood of frost has passed.

RESEARCH OTHER PALM HOUSES

Watch a video about Building a Victorian Palm House and creating a rainforest with David Attenborough*.

KEY QUESTIONS:

1. Learn about the life cycles of the Palm House plants - how do they differ from plants grown in UK gardens?

2. What techniques are used to manage and care for these tropical plants?

3. What is unusual about the climate of Brighton, compared to other cities?

4. Why do you think Victorians were so fascinated by other cultures and climates?

5. How can we recreate a mini Palm House in the classrooms?

Main activityWHOLE CLASS

Create a bottle garden.

Teachers will need to have all the equipment for this in advance and will create as a class demonstration, or invite children to assist with certain stages.

Discuss as you make it why the plants in it will survive, even in a sealed environment.

You can seal with a cork at the end.

KEY QUESTIONS:

1. How is there oxygen in the bottle?

2. How will the plants get water?

3. Why will tropical/rainforest plants be suited to this environment?

FOR YOU

There is a lot of useful information available to help you create a bottle garden and you can enjoy selecting plants and other accessories to personalise it.*

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* Visit Stanmer Learning online to find all the pupil activity sources and weblinks. These pages also contain further reading and the specific National Curriculum links for the resource.

INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY

Grow your own tropical plant.

Each child to choose a tropical seed (the easiest options would be lemon and orange pips which have been allowed to dry out and kept somewhere cool).

There is a lot of helpful information available to help you grow these successfully.*

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KEY QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think the Victorians loved collecting tropical plants?

2. Why were the Victorians able to do this when others before them could not?

3. How and why did they design and build such beautiful glasshouses?

4. Many Victorians would put a pineapple on display in their homes and not eat it!! Why did they do this? Apparently you could even rent a pineapple to show off at your dinner party!*

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Plant several pips in compost in a cup or small pot (an old coffee cup is ideal).

2. To create a mini greenhouse place a plastic bag over the pot and secure with an elastic band. Make sure each pot is named so you know which child planted it.

3. Put on a warm windowsill to germinate. It may take 1-2 weeks for the seed to start growing.

Not all the seeds will grow – this is the same as in nature. Discuss why this might be. What do the children know about seed dispersal?

* Visit Stanmer Learning online to find all the pupil activity sources and weblinks. These pages also contain further reading and the specific National Curriculum links for the resource.

Visit www.onegardenbrighton.com to find out more about their educational activities or to plan a visit to see both the palm house and the walled garden. The garden is free and open seven days a week.

Adapting the sessionFOR THOSE THAT NEED MORE SUPPORT

For lower ability or younger children:

• as a class, focus in on one or two key plants and do some research together on these – scaffold the learning for those less able by giving them structured resources and information for children to do additional research in groups and record these on pre-prepared sheets

• the class can then think about the difference between rainforests and an English garden and brainstorm the differences – in groups or as class – consider plants but also animals and the difference in the two habitats

• research the life cycle of a banana plant and compare this to an apple tree, record each stage – with both words and pictures so the two can be seen side by side – scaffold by providing descriptions and images for those who need additional support

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FOR THOSE THAT NEED A CHALLENGE

For higher ability or older children:

• find out about the largest Victorian glasshouse: Temperate House at Kew Gardens and its secrets*

• learn about how Victorian explorers sourced plants from China*

Here are some ideas to extend the learning by creating other garden structures using plastic bottles:

• eggshell terrarium – How to Make a Basic Terrarium*

• building a bottle greenhouse*

• keep those empty plastic bottles handy – recycling ideas from Dandy’s*

• planting seeds – plastic bottle craft and self-watering plant*

Useful links & further reading1. Find out what has happened in The Palm House,

Stanmer Park, Brighton.

2. Do more plant research. Below are some other plants that are currently growing in the Palm House. Can you find out: what country they come from, what they look like, whether they are used for anything or are edible? Use the RHS website to look up each plant*

• Citrus trifoliata• Yucca elephantipes• Saliva’s - Amistad, hot

lips, involucrate ‘Bethellii’• Chamaerops humilis• Phoenix canariensis• Campsis radicans

• Oxalis triangularis• Abutilons• Lagerstromia indica• Olea europea• Canna indica• Albizia julibrissin• Ficus carica

* Visit Stanmer Learning online to find all the pupil activity sources and weblinks. These pages also contain further reading and the specific National Curriculum links for the resource. All photographic images by Lydia Samuel (unless stated otherwise)