Our extensive and richly varied landscape is a true highlight of St John’s. While the main entrance to the College is situated in the heart of Cambridge’s historic centre, the gardens and grounds extend far beyond the city’s hustle and bustle, bridging the picturesque River Cam before opening out onto spacious lawns (“the Backs”) and playing fields.
Across our 17-acre site you’ll find numerous beautifully maintained traditional lawns, which bring calm to our ancient Courts and underpin the iconic view of New Court from the Backs, with its famed 90m-long herbaceous border.
The grassy expanse to the west of the river, known as the Paddock, provides ample space for both recreation and formal occasions. In good weather you’ll find students lunching and lounging on the grass or engaging in activities such as yoga, frisbee and croquet. Drinks receptions, society photographs, and of course our world-famous May Ball all play out here, with New Court’s distinctive neo-Gothic architecture as a backdrop.
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The Master’s Garden is used for College events and celebrations throughout the year, and is a horticultural highlight, having been fully replanted since 2020 with a 30m-long gravel border, a Mediterranean dry garden, an orchard of more than 40 new trees, and tranquil borders where the gardens adjoin the Old Library and Working Library.
The Scholars’ Garden is a popular venue for plays and May Week garden parties. It also provides a peaceful space year-round in which to rest and read or to take a quiet stroll and enjoy the seasonal planting and the wildlife it attracts.
The adjacent Fellows’ Garden includes a lovely wilderness, filled in early summer with the largest expanse of martagon lilies in Britain. St John’s is also home to some plant treasures, including the monkey orchid (Orchis simia) – vanishingly rare in nature in the UK– and a growing colony of bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) close to Merton Hall. We are also the single location in the British Isles where Tower Cress (Pseudoturritis turrita) is known to grow. Woodland paths, secluded corners and wildlife-rich areas of wilderness connect these formal gardens to the College’s courts and buildings, giving you access to open spaces, fresh air and nature on your doorstep.
Two exciting and highly sustainable landscape garden projects are also currently underway at St John’s. Led by internationally famed designers, these projects will create new outdoor study and relaxation spaces and generate opportunities for interaction with world-class creative and horticultural talent, as well as boosting bird, insect and small mammal life across the College site.
River Court, situated between Cripps and New Court, has been reimagined by Arne Maynard to become a brilliant foil for the architectural rigour of the Cripps Building, with topiary, a rill and reflecting pool, perennial meadow planting and plenty of places to rest or work.
The Bin Brook landscape designed by Dan Pearson responds brilliantly to our wish to de-canalise this watercourse, which runs from outlying villages through the College grounds and into the Cam with scant biodiversity benefit. With the western part of the Cripps Building and New Court as its neighbours, the Pearson garden creates a soft woodland setting for a naturalised Bin Brook, with native planting, a new river crossing, and in due course a dry garden adding to the diversity of our planting. We hope this will enable the creation of habitat for otters and water voles and increase the chance of kingfisher sightings at St John’s.
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