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StJV Allotment: a growing space for the campus community
2025-05-12 • No comments • • Grow Your Own fund
There is some underused space around our school campus. We intend to put in raised beds to use this space for growing food, flowers, and herbs.
We intend to involve the community; school, nursery, church, and local; to help us maintain the growing space, and to share in the food which we grow. This will increase the role of the campus as a focus for community groups and positive local action.
We have a space in the school for cooking the produce, and a venue to support the sharing of what we grow together. This would expand the use of the cooking area in the school, making it more efficient and purposeful.
We intend to use the grounds development expertise of Earth Calling (https://earthcalling.org/) to create the space which our community groups can then maintain.
Earth calling will do the labour, and then deliver a training session for parents, staff, and community members so that they can take the allotment project forward.
The flowers will act as a welcome for pollinators as well as community members. The herbs will be available seasonally to local families, and used in sensory play in the nursery. The vegetables will be prepared and shared with the community, using our existing school cooking area, giving experience in harvesting, preparing, and cooking produce from fresh.
The trees are intended to provide a green corridor between two existing isolated stands of trees on site. The wildlife hedging will provide a home for small animals, such as songbirds, and increase biodiversity on the site.
The community members, children, and staff, of the campus will have an opportunity to develop skills and awareness around food growing and plant care. We hope that adding a bench to the space will make it pleasant and encourage community members to spend time there and share skills. We will also have two tables, one which can be used for garden work, such as potting and gathering harvest, and the other one for offering produce, flowers, or herbs to the local community.
A class/year group (P5) from the primary school will maintain the allotment during the school day, and there is access outside of school hours, and terms, from the all-year nursery/ELC. Evening and weekend access would be through a ‘Friends of’ group who would have a copy of the gate key.
The class/year group (P5)will incorporate this into their ‘class yearly project’, as part of their Eco and Sustainability curriculum. This will form part of their Interdisciplinary Learning incorporating all curriculum areas including Literacy (Writing and Reading) and Mathematics. Allocating to a class/year group also ensures that all pupils as part of their, ‘StJV Pupil Learning Journey’ have this learning experience.
Edible Garden at The Action Group
2025-05-06 • 1 comment • • Grow Your Own fund
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.