National Trust 2014 the National Trust Is a Registered Charity No. 205846

© National Trust 2014 The National Trust is a registered charity no. 205846.

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Heritage Skills Passport

‘Managing Historic Gardens’

What will this Heritage Skills Passport contain?

Chapter / Content
1. / Introduction
What is the Heritage Skills Passport
What is the ‘ManagingHistoricGardens’Heritage Skills Passport?
Creating skills in ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ at the National Trust.
What is the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Heritage Skills Passport trying to achieve?
Who is this structured training programme for?
What is the aim of this qualification?
What progression opportunities are available for you if you take this structured training programme?
What are the benefits of this training programme to you, the learner and to the employer?
Your support structure
How is the Heritage Skills Passport assessed?
The portfolio
What will your working week look like?
2. / Time to start on the Heritage Skills Passport? This is what you need to do….
3. / What will you learn in the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Heritage Skills Passport?
The Skills areas and units
How the Passport is laid out
4. / Appendix 1 Monthly Action Planning
5. / Appendix 2 Personal development skills
6. / Appendix 3 Examples of portfolio pages.
7. / Appendix 4 Compulsory and optional units

Introduction

What is the National Trust Heritage Skills Passport?

At the National Trust, we understand that we need to work hard to engage people and give them the skills to help us look after our places and give them a life far into the future. We need to train people to help us care for our wide variety of properties, help these placesevolve over time and involve as many people as possible in what we do.

The Heritage Skills Passport is a tool that helps us do this. It allows you, as a member of our staff or as a volunteer, to create a flexible, tailored training plan for your own personal development which will give you the skills to work in the National Trust or the wider Heritage industry.

Today having purely technical skills within the heritage industry is simply not enough. The Heritage Skills Passport, as a Training Plan recognises that fact. The training that you will receive allows you to develop your talents and capabilities through practical activities at our properties.

The Heritage Skills Passport includes a range of training options from which you can choose and a development plan that is tailored to the needs of you as an individual.

There are Heritage Skills Passports in four different subject areas:

House and Collections Management

This will engage the next generation of house staff with historic houses by training them with a balanced programme of technical skills in housekeeping and preventive conservation.

Visitor Experience

This will train the next generation of visitor services professionals with a combination of core visitor services skills that will enable them to engage with visitors and the local community.

Managing Historic Gardens

This will give the next generation of gardening professionals the skills to work in historic gardens by training them with specialist skills. As a trainee there will be a focus on engaging the public with your work and promoting key themes such as the impact of climate change.

Managing Historic Parklands and Landscapes

This will give the next generation of outdoor professionals the skills to work in historic parklands and landscapes. The National Trust is the largest owner of historic parklands in the world. We recognise there is no other structured training programme in the world training people with specialist skills to work in historic parklands. There will be a focus on engaging the public with the work and getting people outdoors and closer to nature.

What is the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Heritage Skills Passport?

‘For places, for ever, for everyone’

The National Trust looks after a breath-taking number and variety of beautiful and historic places - each distinctive, memorable and special to people for different reasons. These places include parks and gardens, coastlines and mountains. Our aim is to grow the nation’s love for nature and our very great outdoors.

In the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Heritage Skills Passport, you will find out how to help the National Trust look after these beautiful places and bring them to life. You will learn how to look after the plants and wildlife and hard landscapes in our historic gardens and how to manage our trees, habitats and animals in our inspiring parklands. You will find out how to prevent avoidable damage caused by human impact on the environment; protect the Trust’s long term interests from environmental damage and how to be an exemplar of best practice. You will also learn how to open our spaces up and make them accessible for our visitors and discover how to interpret them and bring them to life with stories that offer people inspiring, enjoyable and memorable experiences of our places.

We will teach you how to deliver our Customer Promise and give ‘Exceptional Service, every time, for everyone’, leaving our customers with a feeling that their experience has really worked for them.

We will help you to find out how to create projects and learn how to effectively manage them, which will help to bring your outdoors alive and expand the offering for our visitors.

The ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Passport to your Future trainees will become part of the National Trust team of 450 gardeners and 3000 garden volunteers who care for one of the greatest collections of historic gardens and plants in the world.

As a Passport to your Future trainee, you will find yourself at one of our hundreds of amazing gardens, and you will take a Heritage Skill Passport which will give you the horticultural skills and know-how you need to start a career path looking after gardens and landscapes with a rich history and it will show you how to bring the spirit of these places alive for all to enjoy.

We’re proud to have an incredibly talented gardening team who are expert and enthusiastic about looking after our special places and they are looking forward to passing their skills onto you.

In the ‘ManagingHistoricGardens’ Heritage Skills Passport, you will find out about the self-sufficient gardens of the medieval period through to the low maintenance, ornamental gardens of the 20th-century, as we explore how fashions of the time have greatly influenced garden design.You will then learn the skills to help the National Trust look after these beautiful places and bring them to life. You will learn things from maintaining and using powered machinery and hand tools safely to soil analysis; cultivation and preparation; planting of trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials; bedding, containers and bulbs; greenhouse work; vegetable production and lots more.

You will also discover how to interpret these gardens, many of which have been designed by the great and best known garden designers and bring them to life with stories that offer people inspiring, enjoyable and memorable experiences of our places.

We will help you to find out how to create projects and learn how to effectively manage them, which will help to bring your property alive and expand the offering for our visitors.

You will find new ways to engage with local communities and will learn the vital work of looking after our volunteers.

You will also have the opportunity to develop personally, to gain self-confidence, become a better team player and develop your networking skills.

You will learn skills at the property that you are based at but will also be supported by regional and national specialists and will receive full training in how to look after our historic gardens and care for our visitors and give them incredible experiences.

You will use the new National Trust Heritage Skills Passport to create an individual and flexible training plan and record your development over the year. You will also develop a personal project over the year to engage your local community with your work.

Creating skills in historical gardening at the National Trust.

If you are interested in working outdoors, good with your hands and enjoy working in a team then you have come to the right place; gardening could be for you.

Gardening for the National Trust is not like the gardening you might do at home. Our gardens are big by most people’s standards. They can cover tens if not hundreds of acres and contain a wide arrange of curious structures from the past from, including mysterious underground grottos, ice houses – the refrigerators of their day, classical temples, triumphal arches, ornate bee hives, bear huts, rock gardens and water gardens and more. Many are some of the most important gardens in the country: from cottage to castle gardens, vast formal or woodland gardens, and small, intimate flower gardens. We cultivate many historic walled kitchen gardens that once fed huge households which today supply our restaurants with fresh produce. You name it; we have examples of every type of garden from the 15th century to thepresent day.

Each garden is special in its own way, whether owned by Royalty, influential land owners who aimed to express their power and wealth through the way they dominated the land, or more humble, local owners. Each has left their unique mark and as a society we have decided that what they created is special and needs protecting. The National Trust’s job is to make sure this happens for the 200 gardens in its care and to allow the public the opportunity to visit these special places for all time.

Making sure a garden remains the same for generations to come is of course a challenge, not least because gardens are mostly composed of plants. Plants have a finite life, they grown and ultimately die. So, getting the balance right between maintaining a garden for today, developing it so it does not stagnate and preparing it for centuries to come is what we are expert at and what makes gardening for the National Trust rewarding and fascinating.

Wary of the need to protect the environment, we also aim to manage our gardens in as sustainable way as possible, using the latest equipment and techniques to reduce our environmental footprint whilst encouraging beneficial wildlife. We are constantly looking at new ideas and approaches to gardening, making sure the National Trust remains at the cutting edge of professional gardening.

Our gardens are hugely popular and each year the work of our garden teams is enjoyed by over 11 million visitors. Visitors come to see high standards of horticulture, a vast range of plants and planting ideas and every conceivable design idea from the last five hundred years. Popular too is learning about how we use old or historic techniques combined with modern technology.

Sharing our passion for plants and places with our visitors is a rewarding part of gardening for the National Trust. We also pride ourselves in the skills we have and the quality of training we are able to pass on and the National Trist is dedicated to growing the skills it needs to care for these gardens for centuries to come.

Mike Calnan

Head of Gardens, National Trust

What is the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’ Heritage Skills Passport trying to achieve?

We hope the ‘Managing Historic Gardens’Heritage Skills Passportwill train you, as the next generation of outdoors professionals,with the skills to work in outdoor heritage spaces. We hope to do this by passing you the specialist skills that will help us enhance the skills of our existing workforce (both paid and voluntary).

We hope that it will give you the skills and the experience you need to work within our historic gardens, parklands and landscapes and within the wider Heritage Industry. We find that people often have qualifications in relevant disciplines when they are trying to enter the industry, but they lack practical skills and experience of the work place that is so essential for them to become outdoor professionals. The Heritage Skills Passport will help you (regardless of your previous academic achievements) to gain this set of skills and experience through a combination of work based and vocational training.

The programme will help to support you if you are a heritage professional starting out in your career. It will not only help you gain specialist technical knowledge, but help you to learn how to apply this whilst engaging others in heritage. The National Trust will ensure that you become a skilled and engaging staff member and that you receive quality training to enable audiences to continue to be inspired and visit heritage, and contribute to the UK’s tourism industry.

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Who is this structured training programme for?

This structured training programme is suitable for you if you are working in an outdoor role at the National Trust, either full time, part time or on a voluntary basis.

Typical roles may include Volunteer Gardener, Gardening assistant or Gardener.

You maybe undertaking a range of activities which could include working in the garden, parklands or further landscapes, promoting and running events or tours in the outdoors, engaging with volunteers and the local community.

It is suitable for you if you are above the age of 16 and are capable of reaching the required standard.

The structured training plan is designed to enable equality of opportunity for all wishing to access the Heritage Skills Passport.

What progression opportunities are available for you if you take this structured training programme?

This training programme is available at levels 1, 2 and 3, enabling you to progress from one level to the next. At level 1 the programme will prepare you to work at an assistant level in a historic garden. At level 2 it will prepare you for jobs where you need to take responsibility for tasks and work on your own initiative. At level 3 it will prepare you for roles where you will be involved in decision-making and taking responsibility for others.

What are the benefits of this training programme to you, the learner and to the employer?

The benefits of this training programme, to you, the learner are that:-

It allows you to develop skills which you can then use in your day to day job

Demonstrates to future employers the skills that you have developed during your structured training programme

It gives you a holistic experience of ‘Managing historic gardens’ and demonstrates on-going and structured professional development

The benefits to the employer are that:-

It ensures the structured development of a staff member or volunteer who can then become effective at delivering an Outdoor role

It gives the staff the skills to perform at a high standard resulting in better customer satisfaction and staff retention

It gives staff more confidence and motivation to perform their role, as they develop more skills and knowledge

Your Support Structure

The National Trust is lucky enough to have an excellent base of professional individuals nationally, regionally and at property level who can help deliver your ManagingHistoricGardenstraining.

The following Line Management structure will be set up to support you to work on your passport:

The following support structure will also be in place to help you with the delivery of the skills in the Heritage Skills Passport:

On-the-job training from line managers, other staff and volunteers at property-level and regional or central specialists

Group training opportunities with other trainees organised at a national level

Additional group training events as required (dependant on travel budgets)

Job-shadowing opportunities with other trainees, members of NT staff and staff working for other organisations

Lists of resources that you can use to help you with the development of your skills are contained in the Passport

How is the Heritage Skills Passport assessed?

The Passport is divided into four skills areas:

1. Induction
2. The Basics
3. Managing historic gardens
4. Personal Development Skills

The skills areas are divided into a number of units. To achieve the Heritage Skills Passport, you must pass all the units in the allocated skills areas that are marked as compulsory, plus a minimum number of optional units. If you don’t achieve all the required units you can still be awarded a certificate of credit.

To pass a unit, you must:

Achieve all the specified learning outcomes in the unit (you cannot be awarded credit for part of a unit)

Satisfy all the assessment criteria for each learning outcome

You can progress at your own pace – if there are areas where you are already competent or just need to bring your skills up to scratch, you don’t need to do more training before you are assessed.

The Heritage Skills Passports are designed to be assessed:

In your workplace – e.g. by your supervisor observing you

Through ‘evidence’ from your workplace (see below under ‘The portfolio’)

Through written material or verbal discussion to show your knowledge, where the criteria ask for this

You are recorded as achieving a unit when your assessor is satisfied that you are able to meet all the assessment criteria to a competent standard. Sometimes this will mean producing evidence over a period of time or being observed more than once, so that the assessor can be sure that you can work consistently at the level required.