Haddenham St Mary's 'Big Dig'

In keeping with its Eco School ethos, Haddenham St Mary's School recently adopted a 'Get Growing' campaign. The school has also been chosen to be one of 100 schools on the pilot scheme for Jamie Oliver's kitchen garden project. However, to embrace these concepts in a practical sense, the school needed to overcome one important hurdle — it lacked a vegetable patch!

So, to create the required vegetable plot, a group of willing volunteers joined a working party on Saturday 5th April and, armed with shovels, forks, mechanical excavators and lots of enthusiasm, crafted six new 'mini-allotments' in the school grounds.

Leading the project on behalf of the school was Reception teacher, Emily Jarvis, who recently completed an accredited course in outdoor learning.

As Emily explained: "Given the implementation of universal infant free school meals from September and food education coming back as a compulsory part of the curriculum, we are keen that the children are in a position to grow, cook and eat their own produce. So we are really grateful to our team of parents who turned out with their garden implements to provide this essential starting point."

Head Teacher, Karen Collett added: "The new vegetable plots are located closed to our new Eco Lodge, which will provide the facilities for learning about growing and preparing our own food. So we now have a wonderful way of involving our children in the 'plot to plate' concept and, by implication, helping them to understand the ethical considerations as well."