🌱Gardening Club 2023-24🌱

Gardening Club is run by Miss Wade.

At Greenfield Primary School, we are proud to be a Royal Horticultural Society Gardening School. We have achieved Level 3 of the RHS Gardening Awards through our work with our school and the wider community of Greenfield. 
 

Keep an eye on this page for up-to-date information about our wonderful garden!

  Royal Horticultural School Gardening Awards

So far, we are extremely grateful to have been awarded Level 3 from the RHS in recognition of our commitment to gardening. To have achieved this, we have met the following criteria:

• Our garden is accessible to all regardless of ability,
• We understand the benefits of gardening,
• We have a whole-school approach to gardening where we take on everyone's ideas,
• We have learned new gardening skills,
• We grow a range of plants,
• We keep our plants healthy,
• We keep the environment in mind to be planet friendly gardeners,
• and we use gardening to support our wellbeing.

"No Adults Allowed Garden"

The children have designed a no adults allowed garden as part of our work with the Royal Horticultural Society. The children were very keen on having three areas: a wildlife area, a pollination area, and an area for people to enjoy. Our wildlife area has a small pond for water insects and wildlife to drink from, it also has wooden sticks as a shelter for hedgehogs and insects. The pollination area's aim is to attract a wide range of pollinators to keep our plants healthy and growing well. We have planted a vast variety of flowering plants to attract bees and butterflies. In our human area, we have created a small, sensory garden with a variety of herbs. We have also planted some chilli peppers. We have worked really hand to create this space. We kindly thank our parents and guardians for their donations, without whom, our garden would not be possible.

Beautiful blooms

In order to get more bees visiting our garden and helping all our plants grow, we have planted some perennial bulbs that will grow back every year. Our grape hyacinths have been the first to grow. These flowers are rich in nectar- and the bees love them! 

A Spring (onion) in our Step

We have finally been able to harvest our spring onions! The weather has been quite tricky to manage but thankfully our onions have grown beautifully. We are looking forward to making some delicious foods with them.

BEAN there... done that!

We have planted our broad beans. I wonder how big they will grow...

In’cress’ive

Because of the cold weather recently, we have been making use of our ability to sow indoors. In order to see the process of germination, we have planted some cress. We look forward to harvesting our cress and having some tasty snacks!

Getting ready for Spring!

We have been raking the soil in our planters and getting rid of the weeds so our new plants have the best chance to grow healthy and strong. We talked about how worms are good for our soil, making it rich in nutrients.

Raising Awareness for Polio Disease💜

We have been working alongside Saddleworth Rotary Club to raise awareness of Polio Disease. We planted purple crocuses as children who receive the Polio vaccination have their little finger dipped in purple dye. The colour purple represents the commitment to irradicating Polio Disease. 

What have we done so far?

We have been very busy in Gardening Club! Before we could get started with the planting, we had to harvest last year's crops: pumpkins, potatoes, sweetcorn, and peas!

We have planted a variety of different bulbs: perennial plants which will bloom year-on-year, crocuses, and onions. As part of this, we have discussed the life cycle of bulbs and have compared their life cycles to seeds. 

We have also been able to use The Woodland Trust tree identification key and have explored our school grounds and all the trees we have growing here.

Our Plans for the Future...

To make our garden part of our community, we created a questionnaire asking our fellow pupils and their families what they would like to see us do as gardening club. Our aims going forward are to:

• Create bug hotels,
• Grow strawberries and raspberries,
• Grow carrots and other vegetables, 
• and plant wildflowers to attract bees.