Kitchen Garden The idea of the school’s Kitchen Garden is for the children to develop a greater awareness of sustainability through having the opportunity to grow their own food. A range of vegetables, flowers and herbs have been sown and planted which have been tended on a weekly basis in raised beds. As well as the fixed growing beds, children have grown vegetables in pots to take home during the holidays to continue to monitor and care for. The children also have responsibility for weeding, watering and maintaining the beds, cultivating the compost, preparing the soil and mixing the manure. The Kitchen Garden club has enjoyed weekly sessions where children have planted, maintained, studied and enjoyed learning about germinating seeds, growing vegetables and creating compost. The children have gained responsibility for their own ‘plot’ within a raised bed and where they have really shown enormous care over their seedlings and plants over the term. Children have brought in seeds from kitchen scraps to grow, an abundance of butternut squashes and chilli plants are thriving.
“‘Lasagne’ gardening is where take all the weeds out of the soil, then lay cardboard over, so the sun wouldn’t let the weeds grow back, then you put leaf litter and soil on.” “Some of the vegetables we have planted will be used in Food Technology Club too for cooking, some of the edible plants as well.” “We have planted lots of seeds as well as transferring lots of small plants to bigger pots. We also made seedling pots from newspaper.” Opposite: Humanitas funded school in Ayensueko, rural Ghana Right: Kitchen Garden at St John’s
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