Canterbury Christ Church University is a healthcare teaching institution providing training for nurses and midwives. They university joined the NHS Forest in 2012, planting 38 trees.
Canterbury Christ Church University planted its Jubilee Orchard in January 2012 to celebrate its first 50 years of service to Kent and beyond. The orchard is part of its bioversity initiative. The orchard includes heritage apple varieties such as ‘Cat’s Head’, possibly introduced to England by the Normans in the 11th century, and ‘Beauty of Kent’, an 18th century cooker, much valued in Victorian times, but shunned by supermarkets due to its large size and variable shape. It also provides pears and Kentish cobnuts.
Formal lawns are being replaced with a mixture of short grass with recycled logs for seating, and patches of native wildflowers. This project is part of the university’s commitment to developing a sustainable learning and recreational environment for its students and staff.
The ‘Christ Church Bioversity’ concept involves the creation of a unique and coherent narrative through which the story of the cultural history and ‘sense of place’ of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site can be explored. Christ Church occupies part of the St Augustine Abbey site dating back some 1,400 years. The focus is on the enrichment of experience of the site through its transformation into an urban biodiversity hub which reflects its rich cultural and environmental heritage, and which also focuses on the future through concern for social and environmental responsibility. Protection of existing trees and appropriate new plantings (such as the new orchard in the site of the abbey’s outer precincts, formerly used by the abbey community to grow its own food), is an important part of our biodiversity planning.
The university’s Faculty of Health and Social Care is the largest provider of health and social care professional education and training in Kent and Medway.
