Overall Purpose
Canford School is a co-educational independent school with over 650 pupils. The grounds total around 250 acres which include formal gardens, a nine hole golf course, an arboretum, parkland and the sports grounds. The gardens include formal and amenity lawns, hedges, climbers, ponds and a wide variety of shrub and rose borders. The Estates Department is responsible for ensuring that the gardens look their very best all year round. The Gardener/Assistant Gardener will be responsible for maintaining beds and borders, leaf removal, cutting and edging lawns, and will assist the Senior Gardener in the development of new planting schemes throughout the grounds.
The post-holder will be a skilled, competent, and tidy gardener with a critical eye for fine detail and improvement, with a strong work ethic and good communication skills.
Duties
Professional
- To carry out the duties of a gardener/assistant gardener in accordance with recognised industry standards.
- To carry out duties in a manner befitting the high quality environment and professional standards expected of all staff at Canford School
Gardening
Provide a high quality gardening service for the maintenance and presentation of the School’s gardens and grounds as directed and led by the Senior Gardener, to include:
- Maintaining, weeding, pruning and all regular gardening duties under the planned programme of gardens maintenance to beds, borders and grass areas as allocated.
- Grass cutting, edging, aerating, treating and scarifying as set out under the planned programme of gardens maintenance to formal lawns and other grassed areas as allocated.
- Receiving and satisfactorily completing requests for reactive works to gardens following damage or issues.
- Weed control within the gardens through chemical and mechanical operations.
- Assisting the Senior Gardener in pro-actively updating and improving the gardens.
Sports grounds
When necessary, to help with
- Maintaining sports grounds and surfaces in accordance with the planned programme of sports grounds works, to grass, all-weather synthetic and hard surface areas as allocated.
Equipment and machinery
The post-holder is required to operate and maintain a range of machinery, tools and equipment. Duties to include:
- Set up, operate and maintain machinery, equipment and tools safely and professionally, following the set instructions, risk assessments, safe systems of work and training provided. This will include tractors with PTO driven implements. Record all maintenance work as directed.
- Set up, operate and maintain powered hand tools, including mowers, strimmers and hedge cutters safely and professionally, following the set instructions, risk assessments, safe systems of work and training provided. Record all maintenance work as directed.
Administrative
- Maintain works tickets, stock records and material records accurately.
- Cascade any given instructions and requirements to the other members of the Gardening team as requested, and ensure good two-way communication
Liaison
- Liaise with Estates Department colleagues on matters concerning programming, materials, access, safety and allocation of duties. Always let the Senior Gardener know about problems encountered on site.
- To be willing to work with any other Estates Department trade team as directed on occasion to help the whole department best flex resources to meet peak workloads. All allocated tasks to be within the reasonable capabilities of the post-holder.
Health and Safety
Follow all health and safety guidelines and procedures as stated within the School’s Health & Safety Policy. To also include:
- Ensure that Estates Department safe working practices are followed at all times and never compromised. Comply with all issued health and safety instruction.
- Ensure that procedures for the safe disposal of any hazardous waste are followed.
- Follow risk assessments for the grounds team, and carry out all duties in the safest and tidiest manner.
- Assist the Senior Gardener in meeting the legal obligations with regard to chemicals, fuel storage, and safe storage of dangerous equipment.
- Properly maintain personal protective equipment (PPE) as required for the work.
- Ensure you have a permit for all work at height. Appropriate access equipment must always be used.
- Ensure that no holes are dug without a permit. All digs require checks on possible buried services and further checks to ensure that no protected tree roots may be affected.
- Have an awareness of health and safety issues within the school affecting grounds and gardens staff.
- Be responsible for all issued equipment, tools and plant, ensuring tools and equipment are kept fully serviced and comply with current Health and Safety criteria
- Be aware of Child Protection Issues and how these affect your work.
- Read and understand all generic risk assessments issued, and to assist in the preparation of specific task risk assessments where required.
General duties - Gardener
- Deputise for the Senior Gardener in his absence.
- To take direct responsibility for key garden areas as allocated, to possibly include the Round Garden.
- To be flexible about working with other grounds trades as required and as directed on grounds tasks that are within the capability of the post-holder.
- To work alongside other trades on larger clearance works, development projects or other grounds works as directed. Such work may vary from data collection to labouring.
- On occasion to act as a second pair of hands where two person work is essential.
- To assist with incidents and school fire drills as directed and trained.
- Follow good practice and keep up to date with new products, tools and techniques.
- Assist the Senior Gardener in maintaining stock and store area tidiness.
- Work alongside, assist and/or escort external contractors and consultants where required.
- Be aware of critical days when areas need to look their best, and plan works and final checks accordingly.
General Duties - Assistant Gardener
- To be flexible about working with other grounds trades as required and as directed on grounds tasks that are within the capability of the post-holder.
- To assist other trades on larger clearance works, development projects or other grounds works as directed. Such work may vary from data collection to labouring.
- On occasion to act as a second pair of hands where two person work is essential.
- To assist with incidents and school fire drills as directed and trained.
- Follow good practice and keep up to date with new products, tools and techniques.
- Assist the Senior Gardener in maintaining stock and store area tidiness.
- Work alongside, assist and/or escort external contractors and consultants where required.
- Be aware of critical days when areas need to look their best, and plan works and final checks accordingly.
Knowledge/ Experience
- A formal horticulture based qualification – NVQ Level II or equivalent (D)
- Plant, pest and disease identification training. Ideally NPTC – PA6a in spraying (D)
- Horticulture machinery training (D)
- Some experience in maintaining gardens to a high standard in private residential properties or formal public spaces (E)
- Horticultural experience (E)
- Sports Turf Experience (D)
- A good knowledge of garden maintenance and seasonal developments (E)
- Experience of working to high health and safety standards, or at least a clear willingness to work in a culture of strong health and safety (E)
- A competent machinery operator (D)
- Ideally experience of working within an educational facility or similar environment (D)
- Experience of leading a small team or supporting junior team members with development (D)
- Hard working and tidy with attention to quality and detail (E)
- Able to use initiative and work without supervision, as well as being part of a team (E)
- Able to undertake all the physical requirements of the post (E)
- Friendly, approachable and presentable manner, with the ability to communicate effectively with people at all levels (E)
- A flexible and enthusiastic approach to all matters (E)
- Willingness to develop skills further, particularly in relation to Sports Turf (E)
- Willingness to undertake health and safety training as required, including first aid training (E)
- Willingness to undertake machinery and equipment training and refresher / update training as required (E)
- Enjoy gardening in all weathers, and capable of prioritising to suit predicted weather conditions (E)
- This post does not include on-call /emergency rota duties. However the ideal candidate would be willing to provide occasional emergency cover in case of ill-health or other vacancy. Occasional planned overtime to assist with weekend sports or golf, or ahead of key dates in the school calendar may be available. A willingness to be flexible and work additional hours when required would be ideal (D)
- Flexibility (Due to the seasonal nature of the workload, there may be a requirement to work additional hours during some months of the year) (E)
Canford School is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion in all areas of our Community and encourages applications from all suitably qualified candidates.
Canford School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people.
The successful applicant will be required to undergo child protection screening.
