Pupils at Town Junior School, Sutton Coldfield, have grown such bumper harvests
of vegetables and fruit that they have been able to set up their own market stall!
During the summer, a different group of children are chosen each day to pick
the produce for their "Town's Variety Vegerama Super Stall".
And parents have been queuing up to buy this wonderful food grown by their
children. Assistant Julie Lilly runs the school's thriving gardening
scheme, which is supported by the Duchy Originals Garden Organic for
Schools project. Over the past four years, Julie has transformed part of the school
field into a thriving vegetable patch – with lots of help from the pupils.
"It has been fantastic," says Julie. "I only have to walk
into a classroom and all of the children start sitting with their arms crossed,
hoping to be chosen to come out and work with me. From Year 3 to Year 6, every
single child has been out into the garden to do something at some stage. I
really hope the pupils will carry this enthusiasm for gardening into the future.
So many of them have said to me ‘I have got my own patch of garden at
home now – what should I grow?"
The children have had a go at growing everything from potatoes and lettuces,
to mange tout and strawberries. Their market stall has done a roaring trade,
raising a significant amount of money for school funds. But more importantly,
the children have started to take a real interest in the food that they eat
and become a bit more adventurous.
James, aged ten, says: "I picked potatoes
last week and my mum bought some of them. They were dark red ones, called Duke
of York. I was surprised because they tasted really nice."
Julie points out that many families do not have big gardens with vegetable
plots any more. "So many children haven't got a clue about where
the vegetables on their plates come from," she says. "For example,
some don't associate potatoes with the chips they eat - when you dig
them up from out of the ground their reaction can be incredible. Even the parents
are learning, they have all been asking me how to serve up this vegetable and
that vegetable bought from the market stall."
Julie says the project has been really useful for linking the pupils' activities
in the garden to their classroom work. From measuring the vegetables for science
projects to learning about what the Egyptians liked to tuck in to, the school's
gardening project has produced a crop of fun, new ideas for curriculum-based
learning.
Town Junior School