Gardening activities at the Vocational Centre at Shenfield High

School

The following document is the story of how gardening and ecological awareness has been

developed at our school. The story started when our caretaker’s house became vacant after many

years, and we decided to develop a vocational centre for KS3 students. This was because, in our

area at the time, there was no provision for encouraging and supporting practical learning in the

alternative education sense for under 14s. We decided to do it in house and recruited Mr Andy

Christiani, an engineer by trade, to help us develop vocational learning for 11 - 14 year olds in the

school. Andy’s love and respect for all things ecological, and his enthusiasm and star quality has

developed this venture into truly outstanding practice. We are proud of what he has done, and

have produced this document to show how gardening is now a part of the everyday fabric of our

school. The photographs show our students at work and engaging with their learning. The story

begins ….

May 2012 (Cleared an overgrown garden)

When we started to transform the grounds at the Vocational Centre, we found an overgrown area and had

to dig out many roots and trim many trees. The soil at the VC is mainly clay, which makes it very hard to

agriculture. We found lots of rubbish in the ground like old TV’s, metal hinges from burned doors, broken

glass and plastic rubbish bags and much more.

June 2012

We established our first small vegetable patch & planted potatoes & pak choy

July2012-Feb 2013

We built a compost heap and Bughotel. Our first sponsor, Tesco Chelmsford, donated seeds to us. We

planted these flower & vegetable seeds for the upcoming garden season.

Students planned and developed a vegetable garden. A paved path was laid by them to divide the garden.

We wanted to develop two different ways of gardening (eco-friendly and traditional garden) side by side,

so that students could learn about the difference in the techniques and the outcomes.

In our eco garden, the students researched and planned and laid the foundation for a plastic bottle

greenhouse.

April 2013

John Newberry (Chair), Tina Hadjicostas (vice chair) from Shenfield Environmental Partnership visited the

Vocational Centre to set up a partnership between our school and our community. Some of the flowers

were grown from seed. We then planted them in hanging baskets to order from staff at Shenfield High

School and sold them so that we could buy more gardening accessories for the Centre. In this way we have

a long term goal to become self-sustaining.

VC Students making hanging baskets. Some of these were sold to staff, and many are place all round the

school environment so that the whole school can enjoy our gardening developments.

Summer 2013

Students planting vegetables in a well-established garden and display their work with handmade signs.

From the harvest of our work, we also started to make jam and elder flower curdle. We gave jars of this

free to our favourite staff!

Autumn 2013

We had a great harvest and won first prize with our runner beans at the Shenfield Garden Society autumn

show.

We started to offer Lunchtime clubs 3 times a week. This extended gardening to many more students and

started to establish our Centre as a whole school project. Our students starting mixing and working with

students they had never worked with before, learning the principles of co-operation and being in teams, as

well as learning about the skills of gardening.

We extended the path to the new gate of the VC garden.

We started to cooperate with our School refectory, supplying for example, beetroot grown in our garden,

to make beetroot muffins, sold in the canteen at lunchtime. Below is a picture of the catering staff with

our gardeners handing over marrows to make a vegetarian curry. In the second picture, we are eating

pumpkin muffins, whilst gearing up to celebrate Halloween. Plus being allowed a sneaky hot chocolate to

reward us for all of our labours!

The Memorial Garden will be from now on nursed by the VC team. This garden is planted with special

flowers and trees to commemorate staff, students and alumni associated with the school, who have

unfortunately passed away since the school opened in the 1960s. We care for the plants, and provide a

quiet place for contemplation for staff and students alike.

A local landowner kindly allowed us to use his land to establish a conservation area. This wooded area is

populated by our bird boxes, which we made in the vocational centre. Eventually we would like to expand

to work more in this area, learning woodland husbandry and ensuring that local wildlife have a secure

habitat.

Winter 2013/2014

In late Autumn /early winter, we planted around 2000 flower bulbs around the VC as well as in pots around

the school. They have provided a colourful backdrop all through the spring time.

We joined the Royal Horticulture Society Campaign for school gardening and got directly awarded level 2

approaching level 3.

We (together with the Science department) are cooperating with several primary schools at the Vocational

Centre. We have received letter and emails of thanks from these younger students, who have enjoyed

making links with their local secondary school, and their own science lessons.

Spring 2014

We applied for 130 trees from the Woodland Trust to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the start

of WW1. We planted them in March 2014 together with over 50 helpers (students, parents, neighbours

and friends (two dogs!) of the VC). We did this on a Sunday morning!

This photograph shows a close up of one of the trees we planted.

We are currently working on our eco- and traditional garden (over 1000 little plants are nicely developing

for this season) and only a couple of bottles away to finish our greenhouse. This was finally finished on

April 4th 2014, just in time for a celebration attended by students, staff, parents and local dignitaries from

the world of gardening, including Lord Peter, who opened the greenhouse for us and chatted to some of

the students who built it. Please continue to follow our progress on our Facebook page Shenfield High

School Vocational Centre, and via the Shenfield High School twitter page.

Mr Andy Christiani, Mr Mark Bolton, Ms Yanika Hennig

We hope you have enjoyed the story of the development of our gardening skills so far. We have so many

projects and adventures planned for the future. Our next project is in co-operation with the Art and History

department, with whom we intend to develop a sculpture project to further commemorate the 100 year

anniversary of WW1. We intend to make large standing sculptures out of specially donated tree trunks, and

we are planning a trip to the Imperial War Museum to inspire us in this new project. We will also be

planting a herb garden next to the school refectory so that fresh herbs can be used regularly in the cooking of

our school lunches. Our students love this aspect of their school, and it makes us proud of them and their

work too. We love gardening, and it is all inspired by Mr Christiani, whom we believe is a true school

champion!

Thank you Mr Christiani and his fantastic team!