Nightingale Kitchen Garden

Following a survey carried out in 2016, we found that not all children have access to  a garden at home. Others do not have the opportunity to take part in gardening but would very much like to do so. Following feedback from children and staff, we agreed that an allotment area would be a fantastic resource for the children.

Nightingale Kitchen Garden Project aims to

• Create an outdoor kitchen garden for all age groups that enhances the children's learning and result in an area they can be proud of, supporting our golden rules.
• To enhance and enrich the curriculum using learning outside the classroom.
• To encourage family members to become actively involved in the life of their local school.
• To run the activity on the basis of equality of membership with each member being part of the discussions and decision making process.
• To encourage a healthy lifestyle - in terms of healthy earing and a responsible attitude to green issues.
• To create an area that could potentially become part of the wider community in the future.

Our main hurdle in putting our plan into action, was funding. With a limited budget, creating an allotment area seemed impossible. However, we wrote several applications to various organisations for help with our project and were over the moon to hear back from two wonderful companies that we had been successful in our funding requests.

The Ernest Cook Trust is a charity dedicated to outdoor learning. They offer a wide range of learning opportunities to children and young people directly and have also set aside funds to help others do this too. They have donated a whopping £2500 to Nightingale Primary School to use for the allotment area to purchase really important materials and equipment to help establish the area. So far we have purchased seeds, strawberry plants and planters, gloves and watering cans for the children, a large outdoor trolley, canes, a weather station, planters to go in the new polytunnel and soil to fill these. We will also be purchasing some seating / tables for the allotment area shortly for the children to work at.

Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to launch its Bags of Help initiative across England and Wales. The scheme has seen three community groups and projects in each region awarded grants of £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 – all raised from the 5p bag charge. Further information can be found on the Bags of Help website www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp

The public voted in store to decide which local groups should receive the £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 awards, 2,421 organisations from Tesco’s 400 regions up and down the UK will receive a share of the Bags of Help fund. We were incredibly lucky that the public voted for us to receive £10,000. The funds from Tesco is currently being used to purchase a Polytunnel as an outdoor classroom, large wooden planters for the children to grow their crops, and outdoor all weather surfacing to enable the children to access the area all year round.