Transform your skin care with plant power! Discover how to use ordinary plant-based ingredients to enhance your daily beauty routine and create sample masks straight from the kitchen larder to soothe, nourish and rejuvenate your skin. During this class we’ll also make our own nourishing, healing and luxurious lip balms, a facial moisturiser with added precious essential oils to nourish the skin, and a gentle skin cleanser. These will all be made from plant-based ingredients (plus a little beeswax) and packaged in eco-friendly tins.

Would you like to understand how plants grow and reproduce in the enticing world of succulents? Then come and join our beginner’s course! Learn how to propagate and grow succulents from cuttings and explore the substrates in which to grow them. Learn propagation methods: stem, seed, leaf, rosette cuttings and plantlets. Delve into cacti propagation: globular, columnar or flat stem cuttings, as well as grafting and division. The course will include both practical and theoretical elements, including a tour of the succulent and cacti collection at the Botanic Garden.

Identifying trees in winter often means that the traditional identification features such as leaves and flowers are not visible. We will look at the features which can be used to identify trees in winter and throughout the year. With the Botanic Garden’s wonderful tree collection as our backdrop, we will focus mainly on broad-leaved deciduous landscape trees, as well as looking at some evergreen conifers. We will discuss some basic concepts, tree anatomy and spend time around the Garden identifying trees and comparing features.

Muslins and cottons, prints and sprigs, influences from India and the growth of merchants. We will explore links between parks and parades of spa towns, Reptonian gardenesque for the newly monied classes, aviaries and exotics for the Regent. Portraits and conversation pieces give us insights into clothing and landscape, as polite society dictate fashion inside and out as literature joins the cultural milieu.

First part in a monthly series examining the interplay of textiles, fashion, culture, and garden design. Each session is sold separately.

Explore safe and practical uses of essential oils distilled from aromatic plants for seasonal wellness. 

During this hands-on course, you will discover how to create aromatic blends for your skin, baths and inhalations to soothe colds, nourish dry skin, improve circulation and more. Guided by Maike Dring, you’ll also practise a relaxing hand massage technique designed to ease sinus congestion and cold symptoms. At the end of the course, you will take home an aromatherapy blend designed to complement your self-care routines during colder months.

Curious about botany, but scared to give it a go? This new, one-day course could be for you! 

We're inviting people affected by Parkinson’s to take part in a short course led by dance for health artist Filipa Pereira-Stubbs and inspired by objects, artefacts and artworks from the University of Cambridge Museums

Sessions start with an exploration of museum objects. The stories of these objects inspire the dance session. We end with refreshments and a chance to look again at the objects. The dance is both chair-based and standing, and we invite participants to work at the level that suits them best. Companions are welcome!

Robert Plane is one of our top clarinettists – a regular principal with the best orchestras and constantly sought-after as a soloist and chamber musician. Robert is constantly expanding the clarinet’s repertoire, rediscovering forgotten works, masterminding major recording projects and working closely with composers. In this concert, Robert will join forces with the peerless Gould Piano Trio, three exceptional musicians, to make up a formidable quartet of pure quality.

Discover how recent conservation work and scientific analysis have shed new light on the object’s intricate design, layered decoration and complex construction. Through this study, the hidden skills and techniques of ancient Egyptian craftspeople are brought to life. The talk will be followed by a Q&A and light refreshments. 

Artist Harold Offeh will be in-conversation with Sepake Angiama, Artistic Director of Institute for International Visual Art (inIVA) and one of the contributors to the book. There will also be an opportunity to visit Offeh’s exhibition prior to the event.