Green fingers at St Bede's

Earlier in the year pupils from St Bede’s Prep School and their teacher Mr Brewer picked up their trowels and spades and created a vegetable garden within the school grounds. The garden was created to provide an interesting and unusual evening activity for the pupils as well as go some way towards enhancing their green initiatives. Mr Brewer is also hopeful that the garden will be used by different year groups. He also hopes that as well as it tying in with the school’s healthy eating policy, it is embedded into the curriculum as a way of teaching pupils where some of our food comes from and how we can grow some ourselves, thereby helping to reduce food miles.

Thanks to lots of sun in the early part of the summer holidays and plenty of water in the latter part the pupils and teachers were able to return to some bumper crops this term. Many thanks to Mick Perkins and others who helped keep the beds tidy and the pumpkins under control over the summer holidays.

Now the pupils are well and truly back in the swing of the term, harvesting can begin in earnest. Year 7 pupils Ambra Fuller and Henry Writer took great satisfaction in pulling carrots, sampling the delicious tomatoes and shelling peas; all crops which they had sown or planted out themselves some months ago.

Mr Brewer was able to recruit pupils Michael Quinn, Hal Taylor and Andrew Lin to help with the efforts during Monday activities. They were truly amazed by what has been achieved and Mr Brewer has never seen someone as excited as Michael in digging up potatoes!

Over the winter the pupils will be growing leeks, cabbages, parsnips and other goodies and they cannot wait to harvest the pumpkins for Halloween!