St. Benedict's Infant School share their success through a garden exchange

22 February 2012

Download the Case Study

The project

The aim of the project was to form a link with a school in a different area of the country to share our successes and gardening skills. Our school has very little green space, being five minutes from the city centre of Birmingham and so we thought it would be interesting to have a rural school gardening club visit our children’s gardens and for our children to visit them.

Delivering the project

I approached Christ Church Middle School in Stone Staffordshire to see if their gardening club would be interested in visiting our school and helping us with our gardens. I knew they had only recently set up their gardening club and that the location was very rural with vast amounts of land and space. I also knew that their school was a predominantly white, British and a Christian School. So as a predominantly Asian and Somalian school, I though the exchange could be beneficial in many ways.

Myself and the teacher of the gardening club at Christ Church arranged for her gardening club (aged 11 – 14) to visit our school (age 5 – 7 year olds). We organised a range of activities including team building games and Christ Church children wrote gardening stories for our children for story time.

Benefits of being an Eco-School

Both sets of children absolutely loved the initial part of the exchange and got on with each other very well. The children enjoyed working together and teaching each other gardening skills, as well as missing with cultures they would not normally mix with.

Christ Church were amazed by the small scale of our school, yet the enormous amount of children we fit in it (we are the largest infant school in Europe). Our children adored the older children and really looked up to them.

Both sets of children have begged both teachers to allow St Benedict’s children to visit Christ Church. We are looking to arrange this in the Spring term, when St Benedict’s can help Christ Church with sowing a variety of fruit and vegetables.

Additional support

• Christ Church have their own minibus, however, the cost of petrol to take the one 2 hour round trip would be about £20
• Three members of staff were needed for the day
• Gardening tools were provided by both schools