ECO - Update

13th October 2022

 ‘We would love to plant more outside, we’d love to start our own sustainable garden and grow cucumbers!’

This was the voice of children of Mansel Park children shared at School Council. We sent Jensen and Layla-Mai ‘out and about’ to find out some more information about what is happening on our school site. Most importantly, Layla-Mai and Jensen wanted to find out what our adults in school can do to support us to be active citizens within our school and beyond.

Here at Mansel Park our compost bins are tucked away out of view in a secret hidden space! Over the summer we noticed something growing unexpectedly in our compost… tomatoes! During this warm, wet Autumn term, the tomato plant has thrived and is growing bigger than ever! We are incredibly surprised to see how many tomatoes are growing as we approach winter. The fruit trees are still bearing fruit, although some insects are getting to them quicker than we can! Those that have been enjoyed by wildlife have been added to our compost and those who can get to them quickly have been scooping them up with parents on the school run as an after school snack!

We have also been gifted some strawberry runner plants by Our Lady & St Joseph in Lymington! We would like to say thank you for their act of generosity and kindness. We can’t wait to be able to see them thrive in our garden and share updates with our wider partnership family.

We have spoken to our site team, Miss Gale & Miss Calton about our passion for a sustainable garden to help support our community.

Our wonderful site team showed us that they have begun to prepare for the creation of a sustainable sanctuary garden in a top secret location! Can you spot the wood being laid and measured ready to construct some new beds? We are really excited to see this evolve so that we can begin to plant and grow our own crops.

We have taken our findings back to share with the rest of our school councillors so that they can also be shared in classrooms with everyone.

Watch this space for more updates!

Ashley & Layla-Mai Y6