WHEN WELSH House Farm Community School at Quinton, Birmingham decided that a thriving school garden would provide valuable learning opportunities for its children, school staff discovered that while they were good at growing flowers, no-one had expertise with vegetables.
School head Caroline Cowan knew exactly who to turn to and over the last year pupils have been learning about growing food from Mark Hobson, who runs Ashfield Gardens at Camphill Houses, Stourbridge. Last September, Mark and his colleague Itai went to the school to look at the garden and suggest how vegetables could be grown to benefit the children and how the garden could be incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum.
As a result, Mark was invited to go to the school one afternoon a week to provide gardening lessons. For part of the year this also involved one of the members of the Camphill Houses community. Another, Lucy Barker, also goes to the school to work with its nursery class.
“We have a special needs resource base here,” says Caroline, “and it’s good for children with learning disabilities to be able to relate to an adult with learning disabilities as a role model.”
The school is in an area with high social deprivation and it is hoped that the gardening lessons will increase awareness of healthy living as well as provide an understanding of how food is produced and the role of plants.
Mark’s first challenge was to involve the children with the garden during the winter, so winter vegetables and salads were grown in a poly tunnel.
“We looked at soils and seeds, and tasted different vegetables such as kohl rabi and winter salads. We presented new tastes to the children in different ways and I was surprised by how keen they were to try new things. We made a wormery, compost bins and leaf mold, and looked at how we eat all the different parts of plants – roots, stems, flowers and leaves.”
All the children in the school have now been involved in the gardening lessons, and one group of pupils enjoyed a special day at Ashfield Gardens.
“We organised a programme for them that included harvesting vegetables from which they then made lunch,” said Mark “We pressed apples for juice, collected eggs and fed the chickens. They were all able to hold the chickens, which was great, as some had never held one before. They groomed and led the Shetland pony and our dog was quite a star too. There’s a big collage of photos from the day at the school, and it’s something the children still talk about.”