Creating a Vegetable Garden at Meon Vale's Tudor Grange Primary Academy

Our most recent gardening endeavour brought together the Forest of Hearts team, enthusiastic volunteers from BAM Construction, Community Governors and Tudor Grange Primary Academy teachers and students.

Over two productive days, we laid the groundwork for a vibrant vegetable garden right within the school grounds. The goal? To create a growing hub to get children interested in growing vegetables and learning about sustainability. Through hands-on experience and learning the whole growing process, they’ll cultivate crops for the school kitchen and integrate harvesting crops and cooking them into their design and tech classes.

The first day saw us clear the designated area of weeds and overgrowth, prepare the ground and lay down weed suppressant membrane ready to install the raised beds. Once installed on the second day we lined them with protective plastic, filled them with peat-free compost and decorated the space around them with bark chippings.

Once the foundations were put in place we equipped the students with our ‘Grow Your Own Veg’ kits, complete with all the necessary seeds to cultivate produce within a square meter and actively engaged them in the seed sowing process, igniting their veg-growing journey.

The garden will be lovingly maintained by the school gardening club, currently consisting of 15 members, where they’ll perform gardening tasks including watering, weeding, pruning and harvesting their fresh produce.

It has been a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding project to transform a corner of the school into a space that will bring joy, productivity and learning as well as tasty vegetables. Thank you to all involved for your help and involving us in this brilliant project!