Victorian Plant Collectors – A Guided Walk of the Botanical Gardens with The Victorian Society

Join Fran Halsall of Sheffield Woodland Connections for a historical walk in the Sheffield Botanical Gardens. Discover the gardens’ Victorian origins, looking at their design and layout, plus the planting that survives from, or was inspired by, the era. 

Sheffield Woodland Connections was co-created in 2017 and is a Tree Charter branch.  Through SWC, Fran Halsall has led hundreds of people on walks around Sheffield’s woodlands and special tree collections, identifying trees, and learning about woodland ecology and history. Fran studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield where she specialised in ecological planting design and now works as Garden Services manager at Regather and as a Research Associate with the Urban Agriculture Task Force.

Some of the collectors are not named in the records, so the emphasis is less on people and more on plants / trees.  Robert Marnock will feature heavily, as he designed the gardens and much of his work can still be seen today.  Other collections are modern recreations of what was seen in Victorian times.

We will mainly be walking on the paths – there are some shallow slopes to contend with.  Occasionally we may go across grassed areas to reach planting beds. 

Meet by the Dorothy Fox centre in Sheffield Botanical Gardens, next to the toilets.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens
Thompson Road
Sheffield
S11 8RB