Authored by Clarence (Singapore), MSc Living Planet with Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
When many students from Imperial picture Silwood Park, they imagine a verdant, enigmatic, and green campus filled with wildlife and plant life rarely seen at other locations such as South Kensington or White City. In numerous respects, they’re correct – every visualization of Silwood Park is accurate!
As a member of this lesser-known segment of Imperial, I wish to emphasize the student experience, activities, and community in our natural parkland campus located in Ascot, Berkshire.
Introducing Silwood Park
Silwood Park serves as Imperial’s outdoor research facility, covering 77 hectares of land and featuring ecosystems like freshwater streams, lakes, an “ancient” woodland, and expansive grasslands. A quick search on iNaturalist, an application that allows users to record and share biodiversity observations globally within an online network of naturalists, reveals that 1,436 species of plants, animals, and fungi have been recorded on campus, and an additional search on eBird indicates that 111 species of birds have been observed on campus to date.
Remarkably, Silwood Park also hosts numerous long-term field research initiatives, with projects like the Nash’s Field Experiment and the Blue Tit Project being among the more recognized studies conducted on-site.
Life as a Student at Silwood Park
The campus primarily accommodates postgraduate students interested in ecology, conservation, and evolution projects. Many of us are involved in several clubs based at Silwood Park. Here are a few noteworthy examples:
- Chicken Club – responsible for the care of the chickens housed behind our accommodation
- Book Club – who meet often to discuss intriguing books from their reading list
- Gardening Club – who oversee the allotments within our community garden
- Conservation Club – who organize nature hikes and conservation-related activities for students at Silwood Park Campus.
Being part of the wider Imperial student body, many of us are also members and actively engage in activities of clubs based in South Kensington!
Casually, we also have groups participating in sports such as badminton, basketball, and pickleball (my personal favorite!), which take place either on the multi-use games arena (MUGA) on campus or in the indoor sports facilities located in nearby towns like Bracknell or Ascot.
In addition to club activities and classes, there are numerous community-led events on campus. Silwood Park has its own student council that plans and manages such activities, ensuring we have a lively and engaging student life! Recently, we held the Silwood language exchange, where our largely international community united to share our languages and cultures over several weeks, and we also enjoyed our annual Chinese New Year celebration at the beginning of the year, where everyone gathered to make dumplings and couplets to welcome the start of a new lunar year. We’ve had community-organized parties commemorating festivities from around the globe (like Carnival), or parties simply held for the joy of celebration.
My all-time favorite campus event, however, must be the weekly pub quiz organized by our student community. It’s a Silwood tradition that the team with the lowest score in the quiz has to host the next one, and I can confidently say that I’ve set the highest number of pub quizzes this year. Despite frequently losing pub quizzes due to my limited general knowledge, there’s always great enjoyment to be found among good friends and a refreshing pint of beer.
Silwood Park: my second home
Even though it is situated a 30-minute stroll away from the lively atmosphere of civilization (like the train station and the nearest village), life at Silwood Park has never seemed ordinary or lacking. On top