Growing an Instant School Garden is a really inspiring way to get the students at your school outside, active and connected with nature, and, importantly, it’s a great way for them to learn about where their food comes from and broaden their taste buds a little, as they explore the less familiar vegetables and develop confidence trying new things.
We’ve worked with hundreds of schools over the past ten years, throughout the UK, and it’s been a real success with great feedback from both teachers and pupils. Our ‘Instant School Gardens‘ are specifically designed with term dates in mind to ensure that students can experience growing AND harvesting their own fruit and veg before breaking up for the school holidays.
Whilst you might expect to start growing a school garden in spring, September is actually a great time to start a veg patch for the colder months and if you start in the next few weeks your pupils will be harvesting their own veg later this term. There’s an interesting variety of vegetables that students can grow at this time of year, from the more common winter time veg like broccoli, cabbage and spinach to more unusual things like pak choi and chicory. There are all sorts of winter lettuces and salads as well.
Teachers with fingers that aren’t necessarily naturally green needn’t panic… Growing a Rocket Garden is surprisingly easy. Once you’ve ordered a garden, you and your students will need to create a suitable space. This shouldn’t take too long, perhaps an hour or so. A couple of raised beds or some pots and containers and grow bags will be fine and we can advise you on this before your garden arrives.
All you’ll need to do once your garden arrives is uncover the plants from their box of straw (children love this part!) and pop the plants in a shallow bowl of water for a few minutes so that they have a good drink before you all get to work planting them in your pre-prepared veg beds. You’ll receive a growing guide for top tips and planting advice to follow.
Once planted, a little weeding here and there and making sure everything gets enough water are the two keys to successful growing. There aren’t so many pests to contend with in the Autumn either, so keeping them at bay is quite straightforward and is all explained in the growing guide.
If you’re interested, we’d be delighted to chat to you about it if you have any queries, and we’ll be behind you all the way ready to answer any questions that might arise over the course of the growing season. It’s all about getting the children to experience growing their own, and we would love to help you do that!
