Year 4 Get Gardening at Kew
Since 2004 our Year 4 children have benefitted from a special and unique relationship with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. This has taken a number of forms. Firstly we undertook a groundbreaking project with Kew’s senior education and horticulture staff to work on how children can be engaged academically and practically by learning the science and practice of gardening.
Since then we have continued sending our Year 4 pupils to Kew’s education department for 6 laboratory sessions a year based on the work started in 2004, as well as having used the enthusiasm generated for gardening within the school to produce a school vegetable patch which produces tomatoes, potatoes, rhubarb , apples and herbs all of which help feed the school when they are harvested.
In May 2010 our Year 5’s were invited as the only school to attend a special launch of Kew’s campaign to encourage everyone to follow their example in using exclusively peat free compost. The then Cabinet Minister responsible, Hillary Benn, came to meet and talk with our children and Omar showed Mr Benn how to make a flower pot from newspaper and then together they potted some seeds from the Kew seed bank using peat free compost.
