Students' Gardening Club Project brought to life

Tuesday 9 July 2024 1.02pm

Back in June 2023 Hereford Cathedral Junior School took part in the Greener Footprints Week school poster competition, and saw their entry from student Soli win top prize in the Junior category!

The stipulations of the competition meant their prize of £250 needed to be spent towards an environmental education project - Karen Davies, leader of a newly formed gardening club, elected to use the funds towards the initiative.

Having only been growing for 12 months, and having recently purchased a greenhouse with money raised by the PTA, the funds were a welcome contribution to the budding project, which sees students involved in growing both edible and ornamental plants.

Watering cans, a selection of seeds and compost were amongst the materials purchased to bolster the clubs ambitions. Miss Davies shared the projects progress.

‘The greenhouse has only been up for 4 or 5 weeks, but being able to spend the voucher on other materials has really made it come to life – we bought greenhouse shelving, a water but to collect rainwater, plenty of seed and compost…’

‘We’ve planted sunflowers which last year did really well, and planted up some pots – some areas we want to leave to grow a bit wilder… We also bought bird feeders and bird seed, so they’ll go up’

 ‘We planted everything from seed this year, which has meant a bit of a slow start, but the cress came up really quickly and the children have loved seeing that’

‘They see their name on the pot of seed they planted and are so excited to see it growing. Our hope is to have every child across every year group involved in planting something.’

Thanks to Soli, Miss Davies, and Herefordshire Cathedral Junior School for taking part and sharing their time and wonderful project with us.

If you want to learn more about incorporating a growing project at your school, or why teaching kids to grow produce is important, check out the Royal Horticulture Society's campaign for school gardening.