Thank you to all students and staff who have planted trees on Duke’s Meadow and behind the Science and Technology Centre and Global Study Centre this week.
Behind the Science and Technology Centre and Global Study Centre, a field is gradually being transformed from a former building site office and yard into a wild flower meadow. The new trees bordering the meadow will help to restore and improve the area and views from the Science and Technology Centre, and will also increase biodiversity.
The far end of the meadow with a natural slope was used as an open-air theatre in former years, and we hope to restore its potential as a teaching, learning and performance space.
On Monday and Tuesday we planted 75 trees – in fact, so many people arrived for the first days of tree planting week that we ran out! Species planted on the first two days included beech, field maple and hazel, and towards the end of the week, privet, blackthorn, hornbeam, Rosa rugosa and Rosa canina (all native or adapted species).
We planted around 250 trees by the end of the week, with help from around 50 students and staff, and we were delighted to welcome Cllr Dr Merilyn Canet, Deputy Mayor of Sevenoaks, on Wednesday. Sevenoaks Town Council encourages the planting of more trees across Sevenoaks in suitable locations.
Every year our wonderful Grounds and Gardens team plants new trees in our beautiful grounds, and from its earliest times trees have been an integral part of the Sevenoaks School campus – the original building of 1432 was surrounded by the parkland of Knole and the woodland of Sevenoaks Common.
The school has used an oak leaf or acorn as part of its visual identity since the 1800s, inspired by William Sevenoke’s coat of arms, which bears seven acorns. One of the school’s foundation myths even suggests that William Sevenoke was found as an infant in the hollow of an oak tree! (Sadly there is no evidence to support this.)
The centre of the campus is defined by the pair of pine trees outside the Dining Hall planted in the 19th century. Successive generations planted further around the site, giving us cypresses at Johnsons and in the Headmaster’s garden behind School House (now Old School), filbert trees in the nuttery behind the Head’s House and oak trees bordering the playing fields at Solefields. Our fruit trees include apples, quinces, plums, figs, a mulberry, an olive tree and a medlar tree.
