Olivia Grundy, from new schools project Where the Wildings Are! explores the successes, challenges and experiences during its first year…
Where the Wildings Are! is on a mission to get more kids outdoors, interacting with nature, and learning about growing food.
Starting from September 2024, an offshoot of the project, ‘The Sustainables’, began a program of after school clubs which aims to bring gardening, growing food and nature-based education further into regular school life.
School is now officially out for summer and with it the first year of The Sustainables afterschool program comes to a close. At Ryelands Primary School we celebrated by roasting marshmallows around the campfire and inviting parents in to experience nature-based learning first hand.
At Sandylands Community Primary School we harvested potatoes, broad beans and onions for the children to take home. At St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School, we celebrated by making a tasty soup out of our homegrown onions, garlic, potatoes and broccoli, as well as trying our rainbow chard, spinach and edible flowers grown from seed.
At the Ridge Community Centre we picked local raspberries and made Eton mess.
Food brings people together and tastes even better when you have grown it yourself and picked it directly from the garden.
This is what the children in The Sustainables afterschool clubs have discovered first hand. They also learnt that growing your own food isn’t always easy. It takes commitment and dedication.
Keeping seedlings alive on classroom windows and remembering to water them during the school day have been some of the challenges we came up against.
Learning to work within our limits, come up with creative solutions and be resilient when things go wrong has been an important part of the journey.
Eating ripe strawberries, munching fresh garden-grown lettuce and discovering the joy of edible flowers proved to be a tasty reward!
Now the schools are ready to build on this year’s work and take their nature-based gardening clubs to the next level.
St Patrick’s has even acquired a poly tunnel and four new raised beds, meaning they can grow food all year round.
And The Sustainables will be moving on to four new schools in September 2025…watch this space!
