School Gardening Awards

Alongside our commitment to Eco School Status, we seek to support our students’ mental health and well-being by enabling them to build up a connection to nature which sets them on a course to build a future openness and perspective which takes in the world around them. This can be through international and national field trips, but in this case is more close to home in the soils and landscape of our school.

As a school, we work with the Royal Horticultural Society by pursuing their School Gardening Awards and we currently have reached Level 4 of their five strong series of benchmarks.

These awards demand a range of gardening pursuits and skill-sets ranging from growth and nurture to technical skills, and seasonal awareness to creative marketing through the selling of homegrown products. Indeed, the Level 4 Award requires that students can: (i) use tools like a professional gardener; (ii) know how to protect your plants against the weather, pests and diseases; (iii) can plan seasonally to harvest produce throughout the year; (iv) know how to use the produce from your garden; and (v) raise funds to buy seeds, plants and equipment for your garden.

These awards also tie into the environmental emphasis of our Focus Week programme which has covered themes as diverse as World Ocean Day to National Farmhouse Breakfast Week, and Fair-Trade Fortnight to Clean Air Day. It also connects in with our partnership with the National Farmers Union (NFU) as a key local employer and a passionate advocate of sustainable farming and care in countryside management.

Looking forward, we are planning to construct a memorial garden in the school’s quads which supports spiritual reflection and the importance of retaining personal memories in building oneself as an individual. Beyond this, we are looking to branch out onto the school fields to produce a larger scale growing model which can help supply the school canteen and stalls at school events.

To learn more about the RHS School Gardening Awards, please contact Sam Sullivan, Assistant Headteacher, via office@friaryschool.co.uk.