Schools

The People's Community Garden is an exciting outdoor learning resource which is available to schools.

We have a team of four professional staff, who have both horticultural and teaching qualifications, and who can facilitate a visit by your pupils on a one-off or regular basis.

The project is an ideal way to complement your work towards Healthy Schools or Eco-Schools status, and visits can be arranged to enhance curriculum learning in science, arts and humanities.

This year, our main project has been an African Garden. Groups from Chantry High School and primary schools from the South West Ipswich cluster built keyhole gardens, a gourd trellis from recycled bicycle wheels, sack gardens, tyre wormeries, and planted a range of crops including Amaranthus, sweetcorn, Ugandan beans, leaf beet, chilli and cabbages. The garden was opened by the Mayor of Ipswich and young greenfingers Kenda Croucher at the Big Garden Party on Saturday 23 July 2011. Next year, we hope to tie in with London 2012 Olympic Games celebrations by building an Olympics Garden, drawing on the growing knowledge and expertise of the town’s many communities and involving as many schools as possible. Watch this space...

Useful websites to find out more on growing in Africa are:

• www.sendacow.org.uk
• www.sowingnewseeds.org.uk

Another schools project is to learn how to keep bees and plant a "bee corridor" and community orchard to encourage bees to flourish and establish apiaries for members of the community and school children to learn about bee-keeping. We hope Stoke High School and the Ipswich and East Suffolk Bee-keeping Association will be the main partners in this project.