Describe your Edible Playground?
We’ve just finished an extension to the school garden in the spring. We now have eight raised beds and a 30ft x 40ft polytunnel. Our vegetable garden is near a little woodland and we have just built a pond nearby. We have around 300 children in the school and now each child can take ownership of a little bit of gardening space. We have water in every area of the garden but we’d like to raise the money to allow us to collect rainwater from the enormous roof of our swimming pool.
 
How do you organise your gardening activities?
I run a daily gardening club for half an hour every lunch time. Anyone who wants to, can come along. Children rarely come to seek me out in my classroom, but if I put my wellies on and set off across the playground, by the time I reach the vegetable plot there is always a queue of children wanting to get stuck in. We also have an after school club on Fridays. I work with six children at a time and we also go out to help people in the community with their gardens. At present we are helping an elderly couple nearby with weeding and watering.

The different classes have responsibilities for the various parts of the garden as well. The infants for example, have a courtyard garden. They have lots of different pots and containers.

Last year the last two weeks of the summer term were un-timetabled, so we used them for harvesting.
 
Who looks after the Edible Playground in the holidays?
With the extra gardening space this year, there has been a real uplift in the interest in growing among the staff.  Lots of them are involved now. We have eight staff on the rota who come in over the summer. Some of them have children at the school, so they come too and bring their friends.
 
What have been your best growing successes?
We are really pleased with the aubergines, peppers and cucumbers growing in the polytunnel.

On the other side of the equation we were so keen to get going in the early spring that we planted out the little runner bean plants too soon. The soil was wet and cold and the slugs had them all. We had some more coming on indoors though – just in case!
 
What pests are particularly bothersome?
Slugs obviously! We have found horse hair quite good for keeping them off the plants, as they don’t like to cross the fibres.
 
Do you attract wildlife into your Edible Playground?
We have a flower garden for bees in one of the raised beds. We were given seeds through the BBC Breathing Spaces scheme.

We have a little woodland nearby too, so we have lots of birds in our vegetable garden. We did our ‘bird watch’ week in that area in January and saw some rare birds, including a siskin. We have also seen a goldcrest and always have lots of blue tits and pigeons.

What do children enjoy most about their Edible Playground?
Planting and weeding! Especially if the weeds are big! It’s that destructive element!

How do you fund your Edible Playground?
We had a ‘bring and buy’ sale last year and raised over £400. Some of the parents and grandparents who came along are business people and we received donations afterwards from them. We are holding a garden open day shortly and inviting all the businesses and individuals who have donated money to us so they can see where their money has gone.
In future we plan to sell plants and produce.
 
Do you have any help from outside the school with the Edible Playground?
We have had financial help and lots of donations of seeds.
 
How do you use the produce from the garden?
We supply the school kitchen with vegetables: cabbages, carrots and all the produce from the polytunnel. The children were bursting with pride taking armfuls of spinach to the cooks this morning. It will go into a lasagne.

A group of children picked mini carrots, peas and lettuce. They washed the carrots and lettuce, podded the peas and buttered a slice of bread and sat down to eat a raw vegetable sandwich. They loved it!

When they were podding broadbeans for the kitchen, they were amazed to see how soft and velvety the pods were. They are definitely more likely to eat vegetables these days!

The kitchen also collect our veg scraps for the compost bins.