Describe your Edible Playground?
It’s in the perfect position near my classroom, so I can nip out and do jobs easily with my class. It’s in a spot where it is very visible to parents and other people coming to the school, but not to the general public. We were concerned about the possibility of vandalism, but the garden hasn’t been touched. We established a veg garden three years ago – we started planting in car tyres which worked brilliantly. The kit we received from Dorset Cereals Edible Playgrounds has meant we could expand the plot and include more children in the growing. Our vegetable growing area now includes three raised beds, composting bins, a potting shed and a plastic green house.

We’re developing an orchard now as well. We’ve got four trees at present. We also want to create a bee garden – with lots of flowers and we’d like to build a wildlife area.

How do you organise your gardening activities?
We have experimented over the last three years with different ways to organise who does what. Now we run an open gardening club at lunchtime – any teacher that has time will bring their year group out so there may be about 30 children at a time in the vegetable garden.
I’m the Year 4 teacher and my class are spending lots of time out there studying ‘living things’. We tend to do some work in the garden and then go in and write about it.
 
Who looks after the Edible Playground in the holidays?
We have a staff rota. We’ve reduced the work involved now though as we’ve got a sprinkler on a timer which does most of the watering. 
 
What hasn't worked and why?
Our mange tout hasn’t grown as well as hoped, I am trying to work out why.
 
What pests are particularly bothersome?
Something is eating our cabbages at present, we’re not sure what. Our cabbages and cauliflowers were devastated by caterpillars last year.
 
Do you attract wildlife into your Edible Playground?
Well we’ve really noticed an increase in the numbers of birds – that bit of the school grounds used to be very quiet. We’ve also seen a hedgehog.
 
What do children enjoy most about their Edible Playground?
They really enjoy the practical side of things. They love getting their hands dirty and they really adore the garden. Parents often tell me that a particular child doesn’t tell them anything much about school but is always talking about what they’ve been doing in the vegetable garden. They really are over the moon when they see things they’ve planted, growing.  When we got the box of plug plants from Dorset Cereals we treated it like a lucky dip – the children were so excited. They took it in turns to put their hands in the box and find a plant – they then identified it and potted it. The greenhouse was full!
 
How do you fund your Edible Playground?
Produce picked by staff on the rota during the holidays is sold through the local shop. We sell lots of produce to parents too – mixed herbs, basil, and cherry tomatoes have been real winners. The children do the marketing; they research supermarket prices and then tell the customers that our cherry tomatoes are £1 cheaper than Sainsbury’s.

We also apply to community schemes; our greenhouse for example came through a grant from B&Q.

We raised a lot of money last year making Christmas wreaths to order. We collected greenery from the school grounds. We should have started production earlier however, as we were left with 50 wreaths to do in the last week of term!
 
What do you do in the classroom and kitchen to link in with your growing activities?
We had a meeting with the head chef and she told us what she would like to use in the kitchen. So this is the first year we’ve grown onions and we’re growing salad and spinach for the school lunches too.
 
Do have any tips you'd like to pass on to other schools?
Car tyres make great pots – there is room in the top for two tumbler tomato plants, one vegetable plant and some flowers.