Landscape/Horticulture Supervisor Apprenticeship Level 3

A landscape or horticulture supervisor can manage a site, supervise a team and maintain the health and safety and security of personnel and resources. Through your daily work with your employer and your training sessions with the college, you will learn the core content covering the generic requirements of this supervisory role including:

• Supervising projects including project processes, planning and specification. Proactively solve practical problems by using experience and judgement to make decisions.
• Ensuring customer needs are met by managing client’s expectations and requirements. Customers might include the public, commercial clients or private homeowners.
• Working effectively in a team by applying effective time management, resource management and support effective team working.
• Managing people effectively to ensure staff motivation, work prioritisation, problem-solving and resource deployment.
• Implementing and maintaining a positive safety culture within a team, implementing safe systems of work and complying with relevant legislation.
• Implementing environmental protection requirements.
• Managing plant growth and development through effective care for plants in different environments, including irrigation, nutrition, pruning and identifying plant deficiencies.
• Select, use and maintain tools, equipment and machinery, and oversee the training of other staff in the use of these.
• Supervising vegetation control processes and methods of site clearance.
• Cultivating and improving soils by mechanical methods and by hand, using soil analyse techniques and implementing corrective management regimes.
• Identifying plant health and tree safety, and implementing appropriate corrective actions
• Assessing and maintaining hard structures, and supervising the maintenance of structures.

For the landscape pathway the following are also required:

• Supervise and manage the installation of landscape features to specified standard including enclosures, surfaces, structures and water features.
• Interpret job specification and construction drawing including planning operations for implementation.
• Proving accurate plans and estimations for projects, including scheduling, quantifying of human resources, materials and equipment.
• Supervise the application of a range of landscape construction materials e.g. brick laying, paving, timber decking; construct horizontal surfaces and basic landforms.
• Free hand cutting and bench cutting of hard landscape materials during construction using abrasive wheels.
• Judge ability of team in skills and knowledge and know when limitations reached.
• Assess and repair hard structures, providing accurate information to the customer.
• Manage irrigation systems e.g. drip, sprinkler and rotary systems.

For the horticulture pathway the following are also required:

• Applying the correct pruning and training techniques for a range of plants.
• Planning and implement propagation using a variety of methods e.g. cuttings, seed, division
• Supervising the maintenance, renovation and installation of ornamental turf areas.
• Developing maintenance programmes for horticultural sites.
• Scheduling work to protect features present such as irrigation, turf and aquatic environments.
• Using and maintaining a range of irrigation systems e.g. drip, sprinkler and rotary systems to ensure accurate and timely water application.