Summer term is a great time to use the school garden for lessons such as science - searching out the insects and other animals that live in your school garden, by going on a bug safari! The school garden can provide a useful example of food chains with plants eaten by slugs that are eaten by beetles or frogs! Lady bird larvae are about now and can be seen munching on green fly or black fly on broad beans.

I worked with St Andrews CofE Primary School in Hitchin this week.  The Year 4 class came into the garden as a whole class to go on a 'bug safari' 

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It  was harvest time at Sir John Leman High School today as we picked and munched on the first spring harvests of radish. These were sown at the beginning of March on my last visit to the school  - 8 weeks later - there is a healthy crop of bright red radish roots! We washed them then tasted them and although their flavour was not universally liked - everyone agreed that their colour and freshness could not

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 It is the beginning of March and year 11 students at Sir John Leman High School were itching to get growing in their school garden today. 

Students dug out the compost that has formed over the last year - a collection from the school's food technology department   fruit and vegetable waste.Tiger worms are still active at the top of the compost

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Schools in the East of England have been gardening right up to the end of term -  despite the demands of Christmas productions....

On monday I helped students at Castle Hill Middle School in Haverhill make Christmas decorations made from willow. I worked with a group of students where english is their second language. Parents were invited to join us,  and we learnt about Christmas traditions in Portugal and Poland

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This has been a busy second half of the autumn term, visiting schools who have come along to the free autumn term twilight training sessions I ran in the first half of the autumn term, across the East of England. Last week I visited Elm Tree Primary School in Lowestoft, Suffolk. Here I discovered a dedicated gardening team that consists of teaching staff, caretaker and  parents, including grandparent helpers. Here is a great example  of how the wider school community can support a school garden and make all the difference to sustaining the project.

All around the school there is evidence of learning outside the classroom and growing. There was a demonstration table top allotment - proving you don't need lots of space to grow vegetables. Spring cabbage plants were planted by parents and children on a parents'open day back in the early autumn. Read More...

The Autumn term has flown by in a haze of heat and dust in the East of England making typical autumn garden activities difficult such as weeding and clearing beds and bulb planting. The plus side has been an extended season of harvesting tomatoes - this has to have been the best year for outdoor tomato growing in the East of England for some years. 

I have taken children of Thurston Primary School on a seed safari of their school grounds to discover the autumn bounty of seeds there amongst the hedges and trees as well as the vegetable and flowers. Seed collecting is a great autumn term gardening activitiy whether it is the french beans that weren't harvested at the end of term so they now have seeds rattling in their seed pods, the lettuce that has bolted and now has a fluffy towering branching seed head, or the sweet peas that flowered all summer.These seeds can be collected by children, dropped into envelopes or seed packet templates that the children can cut out and stick. A good literacy lesson when writing seed growing instructions...

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The autumn sowings of broad beans and peas are ready for harvesting now - infact - we picked over 3 kilograms of broad beans at Brampton Village Primary - just before half term. Autumn planted onions and garlic will be ready soon too. Radishes were also eaten by pupils.

Its been a busy summer term., sowing and planting the tender vegetables such as french beans, courgettes, pumpkins and tumblng tomatoes, as well as repeat sowings of salads, carrots and radishes.
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I have been busy over the last 6 weeks running twilight teacher training sessions (after school hours) to teaching staff and others interested in school gardening on what to sow and grow this spring term. I work with 10 schools across the eastern region, RHS Garden Hyde Hall and The People's Community Garden in Ipswich, using these as 'hubs' to hold training sessions for teachers in the vicinity.

This half term has been about preparing the soil for spring sowing and planting, warming the soil for early crops and  sowing the hardy vegetables crops before the easter break. It has been great to get sowing and planting in school gardens after all the hard work of building beds and filling them  with soil and compost!

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Children from Cherry Tree Primary School worked along side RHS Hyde Hall gardener  Andrew Hellman, myself,  parent volunteers and teachers to build 8 plastic raised beds that will form the basis of their new vegeteble garden.

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 Costessey High school is busy building a new growing area to support  the new Environment and Land based diploma that will start in schools from September 2009.

Back in the autumn I worked with Year 11 GSCE science students to design  the new garden, measuring the plot and marking out the new beds. 

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Despite the torrential rain, I joined a team of parents, grand parents, the head teacher and her husband, who had  volunteered to help build new raised beds in the school garden at Fairhaven Primary school. 

Broads Authority Countryside Rangers also came along with volunteers to carry out woodland management on the overgrown ash trees that were taking valuable light from the growing area

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 Last week I visited Pott Row First School in Kings Lynn  - the first school in the eastern region to reach level 5 of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening Benchmarking scheme.

The school's prize is a day with RHS educaton staff doing fun gardening activities, plus a tree or plant of their choice planted in their school grounds

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 Its been busy few weeks in the RHS Partner school gardens in the eastern region.

I have been working with Browick Road Infants School planting their new school allotment with fruit. We planted raspberry canes 'Autumn Bliss' . This is an autumn fruiting raspberry - that fits in well with the school garden calendar - the children return in September to an autumn harvest of raspberries. Summer fruiting raspberries fruit in the summer holidays - of little use to schools, unless there is a holiday club. Autumn raspberries are also relatively easy to manage with a prune to ground level in early spring and you may get away with no supportng wires.

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 Autumn is a great time to get ahead with your school garden. Any planting and preparation you do now will ensure an earlier harvest in the spring and summer terms ahead.

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 I went along to the opening of a new school garden this week at Holland Park Primary School in Clacton.  This is a great example of a well organised school garden - a result of careful planning, full staff involvement and community support from Clacton in Bloom volunteer - Maureen Goodwin who regularly helps the children in the garden.

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