City & Guilds Entry Level 3 Award, Certificate, Diploma in Skills for Working Life - Horticulture 14-16 Programme

About the course

Your school or Home Educating Parent or Guardian must complete Application Form Part B (Click Here) before your application will be processed.

This is an entry level course for young people who are interested in working in the horticultural and gardening industry. It will provide students with the basic practical skills and knowledge they need to either gain employment or progress to further education/training. It will also help develop common, social and interpersonal skills and widen life experiences.

This course is very practical in its content with learners experiencing the wide range of opportunities within Walton Hall and Gardens grounds and glasshouses/conservatories. Some work will be carried out in the classroom in order to embed practical knowledge with theory elements.

Students will infill with full time groups to achieve this qualification.

Award

Work Safely

Recognising Trees and Plants

Watering Plants

Certificate

Effective Communication

Recognising Parts of a Plant

Harvesting Crops

Controlling Weeds

Edging Areas

Repairing Footpaths

Diploma

Maintaining Areas of Habitat

Planting Trees

Constructing Composters

Making Basket Arrangements

Entry requirements & additional information

Entry requirements

Students need to be 14 or 15 and have an interest in horticulture and gardening.

Successful interview.

Learning and assessment

A combination of theory and practical learning; with assessment through a completed portfolio of work.

Progression

Year 10 students who progress well may move onto the Entry 3 Certificate/Diploma in Skills for Working Life – Horticulture for Year 11.

Related Further Education courses.

Special requirements

Costs that are mandatory for the course:

£1080 per annum (school cost)

Equipment/Clothing Requirements:

Sensible outdoor clothing, waterproof trousers and coat, steel toe capped boots/wellingtons, gloves.

Horticulture

Horticulture is a rapidly growing area of the economy thanks to a strong public interest in gardening, plants, sustainability and food security. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, the horticulture industry is the largest employer in the UK, supplying 18 million gardeners.

The number of garden centres continues to increase and the public demand for attractive horticultural landscapes remains strong. This means that plant growers, suppliers and managers are constantly looking for ways to improve their businesses.

Landscaping involves the design, construction and maintenance of urban and rural environments – to develop ‘greener living’ in these areas. It’s a real government focus and includes everything from gardens, parks, streets, waterways, leisure facilities and open spaces through to large urban redevelopments. There are fantastic career opportunities as the landscape industry is made up of nearly 8,000 businesses employing around 140,000 people, including local authority departments, heritage garden attractions and commercial landscape companies.

Our Gold Medal winning garden at Southport Flower Show

Show Garden Success

Work experience doesn’t get much better than here at Myerscough. Our learners have helped build award-winning gardens across the country - from a Gold-Medal entry at Chelsea Flower Show to Gold and Silver Medals at Southport Flower Show! They’ve also been involved with garden builds for the BBC DIY SOS project in Blackpool and show gardens at the RHS Tatton Flower Show and Chorley Flower Show.

PlantWorld

Myerscough’s award-winning gardens are laid out across much of the western edge of the Myerscough campus. As part of our garden kingdom, horticulture students are spoilt for choice in our Plant World display glasshouses! There are bananas growing in the Tropical Zone, coffee plants and pineapples in the Edible Zone, a Mediterranean atmosphere in the Temperate Zone as well as beautiful specimen plants in the Flowering and Foliage Zones.

Myerscough College - Horticulture Glasshouses

Superb Facilities

Our horticulture students have access to some of the best facilities available. There are brand new commercial glasshouses, an extensive plant collection, fully-equipped landscape and construction workshops, a new Sportsturf education facility, a CAD suite and drawing studio and dedicated garden plots for project work.

Scholarship Programme

Every year there’s the chance for students to apply for funding to undertake overseas trips as part of their studies thanks to travel scholarships. The annual fund, from the Lancaster and Morecambe Agriculture & Horticulture Society Scholarship programme, pays significant bursaries to encourage young horticulturalists to study or explore business ideas abroad. This year, Bronwyn Jones, 19, went to Singapore to be involved as a volunteer on the ‘Gardens by the Bay’ project looking at increasing public accessibility to gardens and using innovation and technology in creating a city in the garden.

Latest news, Horticulture

Myerscough College Fellow - Christine Walkden

Christine Walkden: Honorary Fellow

"My passion for gardening was nurtured at Myerscough College and I've been getting my hands dirty ever since." Celebrity plantswoman and horticulturalist Christine was awarded an honorary fellowship and regularly works with the College and our Horticultural department.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING OUR VOCATIONAL OFFER FOR HOME EDUCATED STUDENTS FROM SEPTEMBER 2025

Tuesday 12th November 2024 update

Myerscough College is committed to providing high quality technical education across the land-based and sports sectors. Our 14-16 curriculum provision will remain in place for the 2025/26 academic year, starting September 2025, but it will need to be accessed via applications from local schools, on behalf of their pupils.

After extensive discussions with our Local Authorities (LAs) regarding the future of home education, it is clear that the government is focused on prioritising the reintegration of many home educated young people back into mainstream education. In light of this direction, we have made the strategic decision to change the Elective Home Educated (EHE) element of our 14-16 programme, in order to align with this broader educational policy.

Electively Home Educated applicants can no longer apply for courses at Myerscough. The only route to enrolling on a course at Myerscough is through a school who commissions this as an alternative provision.

This change will not impact students who are already attending Myerscough College through their schools.

If you would like to consider enrolling at a local school or need further support with your education at home, please contact your Electively Home Educated teams in your relevant local authority. They will be able to provide information about available school places for September 25 entry. It may be possible that some schools will agree to your child continuing with their course at Myerscough but this will need to be discussed with the school.

For information about the content of the 14-16 curriculum you can email us at 14to16@myerscough.ac.uk or call 01995 642222.

Additional support

Myerscough will arrange for copies of academic reports to be sent to educational providers in order to support and enhance the likelihood of securing a school or alternative provision placement for students.

Additionally, please access the links below to help with guidance and support during this transition period:

https://www.youngminds.org.uk/professional/resources/supporting-school-transitions/

Supporting children's transition to secondary school: guidance for parents and carers | Anna Freud