Redhall Grows would utilise the current garden space we have for growing food, cooking, and enjoying it together. We would implement raised beds, along with a polytunnel, to grow a variety of fruit and vegetables. Each of our nine classes would take an active role in the planting and tending to our food growing project. It would also become a key part of our outdoor learning sessions and Eco Group remit. At the moment, we are quite limited in funding for fresh fruits and vegetables for our children to try. The food grown in our garden project could become an incredible tool for our children’s communication. Most of our children are nonspeaking and utilise alternative types of communication. Their diets are also frequently quite limited. Trying new things and learning how to indicate what they like and don’t like would be an invaluable activity for our learners.

Further to the empowering benefits of our learners being able to grow food from seed and figure out what they do and don’t like, with an outdoor kitchen and pizza oven, the garden could be used to cooking sessions (life skills related to health and wellbeing are a large part of our curriculum).

To involve parents and the local community, we would aim to host a series of food-related engagements within the garden, such as a pizza night and a soup night. We would signpost this widely to draw in local community members into the life of our school.

We are currently working on achieving our Green Flag award with Eco Schools, and are hoping to create a more sustainable environment for our leaners and the wider community.

We would propose the following: •    The Green Thumbs (our clients) has approached us at The Action Group to set up a unconstituted /informal gardening group made up by our clients. The role of The Action Group is to provide assistance in facilitation and risk management, and we agree to be the parent company of this project.  •    The group would use our indoor courtyard space, that is privately accessed by The Action Group, that the group could access freely, with an emphasis on fresh produce (herbs, vegetables, fruits) to be grown safely there, away from public misuse or vandalism, to ensure it is safe to then share with this community. •    The group would then harvest the produce, and we could set up a publicly accessible stall in the land/garden that is publicly accessible currently. This is where people could take the fresh produce for a small donation or for free, with donations going towards the gardening groups endeavours or local charities within the community. •    For larger fruit trees we do have a public accessible spot that we would happily set up a orchard. We would put recycled signs up to encourage people to help themselves to the fruit. One client in particular has a vision of us making apple juices from trees that we hope to one day plant/be able to acquire!

Additional things we'd like to be able to achieve: o   One of our service groups in Falkirk are learning how to make planter boxes and basic woodwork skills from recycled goods and so we’d plan to incorporate their skills and recycled goods to aid this project further and to invite community volunteers to help us with this project.  o   Eventually we’d love to see our clients proudly sharing what they manage to do with the ingredients we harvest and sharing that information with our community. One idea that the clients have had is to make a recipe book based on what we cook from the fresh produce, to share with the communtiy.  o  We'd like to connect with Edinburgh College which is across the road from our centre, for them to share their skills in horticulture and gardening where possible, and potentially the cooking units. We'd also welcome any of the students to gain volunteer experience with us.