Grow your world

More than 14,000 Continuing Education students study part-time with us each year – and all of them know that the 'seed of learning' can be planted anywhere, at any time. Those who pursue learning – for pleasure or for career – receive benefits forever after.

Grow: out and about in Oxford

The next time you're in Oxford, make sure to check out the Botanic Garden, founded in 1621 'to promote the furtherance of learning and to glorify nature'. 

Oxford's Museum of Natural History is a must-see. In addition to the stunning collections, the museum building itself is exceptional: a stunning Grade 1 example of neo-Gothic architecture, showing clear influences of artist John Ruskin. The building's glass roof, cloistered arcades with columns made from a different British stone, and the stone-carved ornamentation in natural forms such as leaves and branches combine Pre-Raphaelite styling with the scientific role of the building.

Grow: at home

The University's Museum of Natural History has a series of podcasts to take you behind the scenes, and into the collections. 

Poets have long drawn inspiration from the natural world. Be inspired by a BBC archive of poems devoted to nature. Then try your hand at writing, with poet and field ecologist David Morely's poetry-writing workshop, 'Shakespeare's Field Trip', which draws on the language of ecology.

Flowers have been associated with symbolism for thousands of years. Interest in the 'language of flowers', or floriography, grew during the 19th century, when bouquets were exchaged that contained coded messages for the recipients. The Royal Horticultural Society's schools gardening site provides a starter guide to flower 'meanings'.