Pupils adore gardening

CHILDREN at a Henley school are benefiting from their new gardening club.

Each Thursday lunchtime pupils at Sacred Heart Primary School in Greys Hill meet up in the school garden to plant seeds and water and weed the plants.

The club began last year and is designed to engage, inform and improve the mental health of the children. It is run by three mothers, Liz Reid, Agnieszka Wiktorczyk and Victoria Dingle.

Assistant headteacher Nicola Edwards said: “The children absolutely love every Thursday, when they come flocking. The excitement when they see something growing, like when we grew courgettes.

“The children plant the seeds and care for the plants and last summer we were able to serve some of the things we had grown in the school lunch hall. We had new potatoes and lettuce. Sometimes when they are feeling a bit out of sorts, we bring them out here.”

The Jubilee Garden was created last year with the help of teachers and parents.

Mrs Edwards said: “One dad was a builder and built the planters and just charged us for the cost of the materials. We would never have been able to do it without people like him.

“Before this the area was of a mess but now we have transformed it. It’s mainly thanks to the three mums who come in to run the gardening club for all the children in key stage one and two. They are brilliant.”

Mrs Reid said the three of them worked very well together as a team.

“Aggy knows a lot more about growing than she lets on about,” she said. “She also has an eye for detail so she makes it all look nice because everything I do is a bit muddy and a bit wonky.

“Victoria used to teach so is very good at doing the educational stuff as well as applying for resources and finding funding. This has opened our eyes to other things we can do in the garden.

“In the autumn the leaves can be quite dangerous and slippery and now we have such a good team who love gathering them to make compost.”

The project has received funding from the Henley Municipal Charities and the Henley Educational Trust and solicitors K J Smith and Mercers.

Mrs Edwards said: “That is fantastic because we couldn’t have done this without them.”