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Start a Growing Club at Your School

Growing areas in your school can be created with as little as a hanging basket up to more extensive gardening areas. Growing areas offer students the benefit of practical hands on activities, helping to motivate and enhance their learning experience. Gardening has many positive benefits, particularly in increasing younger children's likelihood of trying new fruit or vegetables that they have grown and all pupils' understanding of healthy eating.

Carrickfergus in Bloom supports the ethos of the government backed ‘Growing Schools’ & ‘Food in School’ initiatives’ by offering guidance to support schools setting up a successful growing areas and club and developing a positive link with the wider Carrickfergus in Bloom initiative.

Concern that young people have become distanced from nature has increased in recent years, with many not making the connection between the food they see in supermarkets and the land that produces it.

This combined with a general lack of interest in food and what constitutes a healthy diet, means many pupils struggle to understand the interdependence between urban and rural environments, and the countryside with the wildlife and people it sustains. Carrickfergus in Bloom can address this issue by encouraging and supporting and inspiring all schools in the Borough (nursery, primary, secondary and special) to use the outdoor classroom, both within and beyond the school grounds, as a context for learning across the curriculum.

Attention All Schools: We would like to tell the world about your school vegetable patch. Just send in some text and photographs and we will publish your information on your own Carrickfergus in Bloom webpage.

To tell us what your school is doing click here.

To view our schools page click here.

Download the Guidance and Application Form

External Link: RHS grow your own VEG

NEWS

Get Your School Growing!

Enter the exciting new Royal Horticultural Society's (RHS) competition and win some fantastic prizes for your school. Design a new growing space in your school grounds, for a budget of £500, and you could win £500 of gardening resources plus five days help from a trained horticulturist to develop your design into a flourishing growing space at your school. The top school will also win a visit from Chris Collins, the Blue Peter gardener, to help implement their plans. To enter go to the RHS website www.rhs.org.uk/schoolgarden.

To keep in touch with all Carrickfergus in Bloom activities, join our mailing list: click here. To contact Carrickfergus in Bloom by e-mail: click here or telephone 028 9335 8039.

The Carrickfergus in Bloom initiative is organised by Carrickfergus Borough Council.