We love to hear about what our schools are up to and see photos of their gardening activities. Tell us about what you grew, how you grew it, what you learnt, and we will upload it to the website.
You can send us your news stories in PDF format and your photos in jpg format.
Our visit from Wacks Wicked Plants finally happened last Friday. It was worth the wait, and the children thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
This afternoon the children enjoyed a visit from Peter Walker, his wife Helleentje and their very friendly rescue dog Billy from Wack's Wicked Plants, a Carnivorous Plant nursery in Scampston, North Yorkshire. They taught the children all about the different types of carnivorous plants and they even had the opportunity to plant their own seeds so that they can grow their own in school.
From Marwood Church of England VC Infant School -
'Just a thank you from us for the lovely book that’s arrived today. Our children have been busy making use of the gardening gloves you sent us last year and have been busy planting this week – broad beans, peas, potatoes and beetroot.'
From Old Town, Calderdale.
'We received our copy today. Thank you so much, it’s a lovely book.'
Their teacher told us:
What a lovely surprise I had when I opened your email this morning! We are absolutely delighted to receive one of your Grounds Development Awards for our raised beds and vegetable garden. All the children cheered when I told them today! Thank you also for the advice about the compost and the organic barriers. We do work very hard to promote outdoor learning and a love of nature. So we feel very privileged to receive one of your awards.
Grewelthorpe Primary wrote to us saying:
Our school would love to have an apple tree for the school grounds. We have the perfect spot for it. At the back of the school we have a patch of land which is our wildlife zone. We'd love it to go there.
A message from Great Ouseburn Community Primary School regarding their day out to the Yorkshire Arboretum.
Old Town Primary took up the offer of a YGT workshop at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate over the summer, while the Capability Brown exhibition was on display. They had a wonderful day, learning about the famous landscape designer, making drawings and visiting Valley Gardens in the afternoon.
Back at school, Class 4 produced a beautiful, Capability Brown inspired textile wall-hanging; while Class 3 extended the learning to produce a photo-collage inspired by their own, local, landscape. The children and adult-helpers were also busy in the community plot at the school over the Summer. In the winter the garden was used by the children to make their own beautiful Christmas wreaths.
Autumn 2013 saw the Year 3 children at St Catherine's Primary, Sheffield enjoying planting Japanese onion sets in the raised beds funded by an earlier YGT award.
We were delighted to visit Sowerby Primary School, Thirsk, in September and be shown round their grounds by headteacher, Mrs Yendall. The school has worked hard over the last few years to transform their grounds into a wonderful, additional, resource for learning and play. We were shown the fenced wildlife pond with dipping platform; a variety of willow structures; the newly planted trees that form the beginnings of a wildlife corridor and their productive kitchen garden, run by parents and children.
We also presented the school with one of the YGT Grounds Development Awards to help them transform a barren spot into a sensory garden. We have the 'before' picture (below) and look forward to seeing the 'after' shots!
Stakesby Community Primary School, Whitby have been out checking on their garden areas and kindly sent us this update on their YGT onions and apple tree:
'Just to let you know that, incredibly, our onions have survived and are looking very healthy! The apple tree is also starting to show signs of budding leaves and we have watered it generously last week.'
This year at Stakesby, individual classes are taking responsibility for specific areas of the school gardens, sowing seeds, weeding and maintaining them and taking on ownership.
St Catherine’s Catholic Primary School in Sheffield was awarded a YGT Grounds Development Award in Spring 2012 and helped them to create a new growing area in their grounds. Their latest update and photos show how they have been fairing in the school garden with the late Spring this year:
'March update:
March, crazy weather, we’ve had quite a few indoor lessons due to the weather this month! However we still managed to get a couple of important jobs done. We are excited to see the apple tree coming to bud this year. We’ve had to temporarily plant it at the top of our woodland area as we are still preparing our new orchard but hope to get it planted before the end of term if possible.
We received free potato kits from GYOP in January and the children were taught how to chit and then the Y4 children planted them up and will keep looking after them until they are ready to harvest in June/July.
In our raised beds area the children planted up shallots, we then had to cover the beds with rainbow canes and bird netting as we have a couple of foxes on our school grounds which like to dig up the soil.
It’s unfortunate that we had such bad weather this month as it held us back from planting up seeds although we have managed to start up some sweet peas.'
