Timothy Walker – 10 March

One of the Gardening Club favourite speakers, Timothy Walker, returned to Stonesfield on 10 March.

This year’s talk took us on the journey through Tenerife that he and his Oxford students went on each year whilst on their annual field trip.

We followed Timothy from the dry west of the island, up to the heights of Mt Teide (3,718m) and then down to the steep ravines on the eastern side of the island. All the while Timothy shared memories and photographs of the diverse and unique flora, including laurel forests, Macronesian heathland, pine forests, and high-mountain vegetation, with endemic species like the Tajinaste, Dragon Tree, and Canary Pine.

Timothy has done this field trip for many years and his enthusiasm for the island’s unique botany was obvious. This field trip was also clearly memorable for his students who tell him years later that it was the best experience they had at university. The talk also inspired Gardening Club members to make the trip to Tenerife for more that just the sunshine.

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Timothy was Horti Praefectus of the Oxford Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014. He now holds a lectureship in Plant Conservation at Somerville College and is a lecturer in biology at the Department of Biology, University of Oxford. He has won four gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. As well as being an author he also presented Botany – A Blooming History, a series of three television programmes broadcast on BBC Four.