Food For Life Partnership visit to Salop Drive.

A crisp spring day in March brought representatives from the 3 Food For Life Partnership (FFLP) Birmingham flagship secondary schools to Salop Drive Market Garden. The Garden Organic Education Officer for West Midlands, Malcolm Smith, had organised the morning with Ideal For All. The aim of the visit was to enable the staff and pupils to see organic food growing on a large scale; to learn some new skills; and to enable them to network and share experiences from each others schools.

Archbishop Ilsley School in Acock's Green; Four Dwellings School in Quinton; and Bartley Green High School were all chosen to be FFLP flagship schools in September 2008. Since then the schools have been working to transform their food culture which includes setting up a food growing area at school. What better way to learn than to visit an established market garden and learn from the professional growers?

The day began with the pupils explaining how their school allotments were progressing, and then Veronica Barry and Gordon McVitie showed the visitors around the site focusing on composting, the polytunnels, fruit growing and seed sowing.

Following a healthy snack of melon and pineapple the pupils split into two groups and began practical activities - seed sowing (beetroot) and transplanting spring onion seedlings in the polytunnel. Everyone was given the chance to participate and teachers were pleasantly surprised at the patience shown by the young people. The day forced home the importance of issues such as successional sowing and spacing of seedlings.

One of the pupils said, "The tour gave us good ideas about our own allotment, and how we could improve it. I am hopefully going to pass on information to my form and give them advice on what and how we should present our part of the school allotment."

Another remarked, "It was a very beautiful place with apple trees and peach trees and a lot of other things. In the greenhouse it was very warm and there were spring onions growing. The whole garden was very big and designed very nicely."

The schools were all encouraged to visit the site again in the Summer term to view the progress of their work on this day and to see how the site changes across the seasons. They also swapped contact details and will follow up ideas and leads gained from the day together.

Feedback from the teachers was very positive: "Excellent grounding for the next stage of our allotment project. 'Hands on' was great...the manner of Gordon and Victoria was lovely - calm and patient with the children".

The Food for Life Partnership is a network of schools and communities across England committed to transforming food culture. Led by the Soil Association, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund, the Food for Life Partnership brings together the practical expertise of the Focus on Food Campaign, Garden Organic and the Health Education Trust.

For more information about FFLP please visit www.foodforlife.org.uk

Last Modified: 2009-04-15 10:56:14