As you may know from a previous post, this year Wootton Courtenay Gardening Club donated £300 towards school visits to the community garden at Good Vibe Veg in Horner. Here is an update from Leighanne and Adam from Good Vibe Veg:
We had our first visit from St Dubricius School on Friday the 8th September. There are a further 11 visits booked between now and July 2024. These are spread between all classes (Nursery; Reception and Year 1 combined; Years 2, 3 and 4 combined). Each visit, at the moment, is going to be around an hour or two and we have many ideas for activities to engage the children.
On Friday, Explorer Class (Yr2) helped us to harvest some of our main crop potatoes (‘Cara’ variety). There were 18 children in total, and they got stuck in straight away! We gave them a quick tour of some of our vegetable beds to see what vegetables they could spot (the pumpkins being the most exciting) before explaining how we started our No Dig beds, and how they were going to help us.
Our next visit is with Discovery Class (Reception and Year 1) in November. At the moment we are thinking we may make scarecrows with them within the shelter of the shed, but ideas will be discussed with their class teachers. Going forward we’d like to get them all to help us make a bed of their own to care for; sow seeds, plant out seedlings, and eventually harvest and maybe take some food away to make a meal with.
We are incredibly grateful for the Gardening Club’s contribution. Thank you. This will help us to buy children’s sized gloves, small tools, small wheelbarrows and other provisions to enhance their visits such as seeds, compost and wildlife charts to display in our shed.
In future we hope to buy some picnic benches for students, visitors and volunteers to gather around for activities (and snacks!).
Thanks again!
Leighanne and Adam
Wootton Courtenay 