Environment
The University recognises the important role the built and natural environment has on the wellbeing of its community, and in the achievement of its key strategic aims.
The University Master Plan for the next 20 years takes an integrated approach to the development of a sustainable university estate, that shows how the principles of Education for Sustainable Futures can be applied in practice.
The University also recognises that it has an impact upon the local and global environment and is committed to minimising any negative and enhancing the positive effects that the delivery of its activities have. It is committed to environmental good practice and maintains an externally certified ISO14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) to ensure continual improvement, prevention of pollution and compliance with all appropriate environmental legislation.
- Develop the University estate in a way that maximises educational, research and community benefit and enhances positive environmental impact
- Develop our campus environments, recognising our sense of place within unique heritage locations
- Integrate our built and natural environments in ways that embody our values; providing specific examples of our distinctive education and research profile
- Maintain progress in reducing environmental impact, maintaining a focus on reducing our carbon emissions in support of sector and national targets
Our Wilder Campus and Green Heritage
The campus has been steadily developed since it opened in the 1960s, and recently expanded into the site of the old Canterbury Prison, striving to maintain a balance between creating a modern teaching environment and biodiverse and welcoming open green spaces. This careful management has enabled a bustling university campus to contain areas of absolute tranquillity just a few hundred metres from the busy city centre.
Green Heritage is an approach to heritage sites that values nature (wild, semi-natural and cultivated environments) and seeks to provide a distinctive place for it that improves both human wellbeing and the health of the planet. It involves nurturing or restoring the living element within heritage spaces. It also involves interpretation of these sites via reference to the living world in the broadest sense, both in the past and the present.
While some definitions of heritage include biodiversity (e.g. ICOMOS) we believe the Green Heritage concept embodies a more overt approach to linking the living world and cultural heritage. Green Heritage is a way of thinking; it recognises that we are bound by our responsibility for present and future generations, but also for the legacy and remains of past people, as well as for the living world.
Green Heritage sites are often located close to or within human settlements, often providing accessible spaces where people can develop a deep ‘sense of place’ incorporating both cultural heritage and the living world. Take a look at the Green Heritage Manifesto for more information on this subject.
External organisations have recognised the University's sustainable approach to its operations, and its contribution to the local environment.
Eco Campus
The University's Environmental Management System (EMS) ensures compliance with ISO14001. Regular audits, both internal and external, check that the University is compliant with all relevant national and international environmental laws. The University first received an Eco Campus Platinum Award for its EMS in 2013, and has maintained that level of accreditation ever since.
Green Gown Awards
The University's environmental credentials have been recognised by the receipt of Green Gown Awards in 2017 (National) and 2018 (International).
In Bloom
The University's campus has been part of Canterbury's entry for Britain in Bloom each year since we were first awarded Gold in 2015, and we have been awarded Gold in South and South East in Bloom every year since, plus Silver Gilt for Britain in Bloom in 2022.
People & Planet
We were awarded a 2:1 by People & Planet in the University League for 2022. See our full results alongside other University's scores.
The Christ Church ‘Heritage A to Z’ was originally designed as part of our university’s celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the inscription of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS).
The entries were written by academic staff and students (past and present), and others representing our wider partnership within the WHS; including the King’s School, staff of the Cathedral, and a representative of St. Martin’s Church. The Heritage A to Z is designed to be both informative and entertaining.
Following on from our Heritage A to Z, the CCCU Science A to Z was created for our Diamond Jubilee year as a celebration of our diverse academic community and our commitment to sustainability.
Flanking St Augustine's Abbey and the Old Sessions House, this small vineyard took inspiration from the success of our hop gardens and is planted with grapes. It is a celebration of our green heritage: the monastic history of our campus grounds, planted with the aspiration that in time we will be able to create wine to go with our annual CCCU heritage ale.
The dragons in Becket garden took inspiration from the medieval dragons discovered in the stonework of St Augustine’s Abbey, and were designed and hand-crafted by staff, students and the local community between the summer of 2022 and the spring of 2023 to represent climate change in our world. This project, led by Dr Diane Heath from the Centre for Kent History and Heritage, aimed to explore how learning about and working to address the climate emergency can be made accessible to SEND children.
The medieval dragons were built using sustainable materials, including second-hand rubble and natural clay. Finally, sedum and local mosses were transplanted onto the sculptures to encourage growth, so they will act as a carbon capture structure for our future.
Bioversity is our response to the need to nurture the environment in which we work. It involves the stewardship of our green spaces within the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) which in our case involves part of the outer precinct of St Augustine’s Abbey. The Bioversity Initiative focuses specifically on cultural aspects of biodiversity in relation to the history and heritage of the site, explicitly linked to the fact that it has been a centre of knowledge and community in our city for over fourteen
This Grade II listed, scheduled monument is all that remains above-ground of a brew-bakehouse likely built in the late 1200s that was once part of the ancient St Augustine’s Abbey grounds. This western wall is a part of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) which includes a portion of our campus grounds, St Martin's Church, St Augustine's Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. It has inspired several green heritage projects at CCCU, including our hop gardens, clay bread oven and our Golden Jubilee heritage orchard.
This mural, painted by local artist Greg Stobbs, celebrates the reintroduction of the red-billed chough to its natural habitat at Kent’s chalk cliffs by Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Trust with support from CCCU’s research community. The chough features on both the University and Canterbury coats of arms, adopted from the crest attributed to the murdered Archbishop, St Thomas Becket.
This mature, cultivated garden is a peaceful communal green space on campus close by our historic Brew-Bakehouse Wall with three points of heritage interest. It is home to a Romani caravan, known as a vardo, constructed circa 1908, to a heritage mulberry tree that is around fifty years old, and a Tradescant Memorial larch tree, planted to commemorate renowned gardener John Tradescant the Elder. Tradescant came to Canterbury in the early 1600s and was responsible for laying out extensive gardens in the Abbey precincts, including orchards, fragrant flowers and groves from 1615 to 1623, and for introducing a number of specimens and cultivars to the UK from his travels abroad, including the larch.
The Ridan Pro composter that lives by Gate 4 was acquired and installed as a joint project by the University and Students' Union as part of their Responsible Futures partnership. It is a hot, anaerobic constant throughput composter, which is capable of dealing with all types of food waste and bio-degradable green waste on-site. Much of the University's uncooked waste food from our food outlets is fed into our food composter, which is turned regularly by staff and student volunteers. The resulting compost has been used in the Johnson Wellbeing Garden and the Hop Gardens, and some compost has also been donated to external community projects.
This little orchard (between Ramsey, Powell and Laud) was planted as part of our Golden Jubilee year celebrations in 2012 with Kentish varieties of heritage apples and cobnuts echoing the orchards that were tended by medieval monks on this site. The orchard has been enhanced by further wildflower planting and seed sewing and makes use of natural fallen-log style benches so that the biodiversity and peace of this small pocket of heritage green space can be enjoyed by staff, students and visitors.
One of our best-loved green heritage projects, our hop garden is a celebration of our unique 'sense of place'. The oldest is tucked behind the Fleming buildings. This area has been planted with four types of heritage hops: Canterbury Whitebine; Early Prolific; Bramling Cross and East Kent Goldings, some of which are specific to this local region. Each year students and staff harvest the hops by hand, which are blessed and carried down through the city where they are brewed into a green hop ale in collaboration with a local brewery. Each year, the ale is renamed, rebranded and the label redesigned by Christ Church students and staff as part of one of our module collaborations.
Led by the International office, international student ambassadors and international students from across the University, a long bank along the edge of our Stodmarsh playing fields is being transformed over time into an International Forest.
Johnson Wellbeing Garden is a biodiverse community garden for growing, meeting, relaxing and connecting with nature, where staff and students can relax in a tranquil outdoor setting. The garden is tended during weekly Potter and Prune sessions, which staff and students are invited to join. We have a videos that follow our journey developing and maintaining this space during and after lockdown saw it reclaimed almost entirely by nature.
In a courtyard in the centre of Laud is the Olive Grove, a pocket garden tucked away in the heart of campus designed as a low-maintenance, drought-resistant and sheltered community space, home to olive trees and hardy, fragrant plants such as lavender and rosemary. The pathways that curve across it were designed to be reminiscent of our CCCU triquetra logo.
Staff and students planted more than 400 native saplings in the spring of 2022, as part of the celebrations for Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The saplings will grow to form a hedgerow along the upper bank of the Verena Holmes with our second hop garden tucked just behind, following an ancient ley line that links together the heritage sites that comprise the grounds of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), of which our campus is a part.
Hedging is a vital component in encouraging more birds, insects and other wildlife onto campus, and the saplings will make a substantial contribution to the ecology of the spaces surrounding the newly built Verena Holmes STEM Building.
The roundhouse was designed by members of the University of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, utilising sweet chestnut timbers from their ancient campus woodland, and was generously donated to the Academy for Sustainable Futures. It is a collaborative community space for outdoor learning, socialising and events.
This church, situated across the road from Gate 1, is not only home to our Music Centre but also to two of seven 19th century 'baobab' plane trees in Canterbury which form a cross spanning two and a half miles of the city when viewed from above.
The original site of the CCCU teaching school founded in 1962, St Martin's Priory at the top of North Holmes Road is surrounded by beautiful, cultivated gardens that include a rose garden and grass labyrinth, and sits alongside the historic St Martin's Church, once the private chapel of Queen Bertha around the time of St Augustine's mission to Canterbury. It is the oldest parish church in the English-speaking world, and forms part of the Canterbury UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) along with the abbey, the cathedral and part of our campus including the Brew-Bakehouse Wall.
Although sustainability is a key factor in all of the University's operations, there are some locations on campus that have been created and curated with sustainability goals in mind. You can see all of these at a glance and read a little about them with our Wilder Campus Map or learn more about each project below.
There are several wildflower banks planted across our Canterbury Campus, particularly along the outer walls, behind Fleming, Hepworth and Becket and interspersed with other sustainability spaces such as the Jubilee Orchard and Abbey Walk Vineyard. These wildflower areas promote biodiversity and provide valuable resources and habitats for local pollinators and all manner of small insects and wildlife.
The yurt is a sustainably sourced, temporary outdoor learning and recreation space that moves around campus as needs dictate and is available from Spring to Autumn. Its usual home is between Laud and Powell Buildings, under a row of cherry trees where covers a picnic bench. It is often used as a pop-up event space, but is otherwise available for anyone to use and enjoy.
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