We have created a school vegetable/ fruit garden in Crehana N.S! The Nurture group which is facilitated by Mrs. Foster created this outdoor learning space for the whole school to use. We had the help of our caretaker John Larkin, who built and filled our raised beds. We will be encouraging a food education programme in the school that aims to enhance food literacy. Through garden-based learning and hands-on growing experiences, we will assist students in developing a deeper understanding of the origins of healthy, sustainable food and most importantly learn how to grow their own food.
We firmly believe that a school garden is a fantastic project for our school. It represents an amazing learning tool that can have an enormous impact on our students’ development. Having a garden is a great reflection on our school and any innovative, progressive school should not be without a garden as we move towards a more sustainable society that aims to improve wellbeing, take on climate action and tackle the biodiversity crisis.
We were equipped with a comprehensive garden kit from GIY Ireland, which included four raised beds, soil, seeds, and bulbs, along with curriculum-linked lesson plans These resources support school gardens and elucidate the rationale behind GIY (Grow it Yourself) to students. Collectively, this programme transforms knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours surrounding food. We also got growing packs from Supervalue Let’s Grow and Incredible Edibles.
Each ‘SuperValu Let’s GROW’ classroom pack included seeds for cress, peas, salad leaves, pumpkins and sunflowers. There are also 32 compostable pots, 32 magic compost discs and expert GIY resource booklet with growing guides, lessons and activities created by GIY and lots of classroom goodies.
Agri aware Incredible Edibles is a healthy eating project for primary schools. The aim of the project is to educate students about growing fruit and vegetables and to increase their knowledge of food origin and quality. It also highlights the important role that fresh produce plays in a healthy balanced diet and the importance of consuming at least five portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Participating schools, as we are were sent free grow packs that contained seeds to grow strawberries, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, chives, carrots and turnips, as well as other materials to help them get started growing! We would like to be recognised nationally as an Incredible Edibles School. There are three levels of School Status; Gold, Silver and Bronze. Each school that enters a logbook will receive a certificate of achievement and a rosette! We could also win prizes for the whole school, including raised garden beds and soil, water tanks, gardening hampers and more!
We have also planted a number of tree saplings- alder, willow, birch, hawthorne, hazel and spruce. We got our trees from Crann Ireland as well as the Spar National Tree day initiative. We would like our children to learn how important trees are to people, our culture and heritage and the natural world.
We hope to extend our school vegetable and fruit garden over the coming years and have all classes benefitting from this fantastic learning experience. We would like to thank the above sponsors and look forward to growing and eating our own produce over the coming months!!
Hazel and Hawthorne tree saplings
Hazel Tree Saplings
Alder, Birch and Spruce tree saplings
