Grow Your Own School

Training and resources to enable children to enjoy the wellbeing, educational and environmental benefits of gardening.

Developed by the School of Geography and Planning, this project supported primary school teachers in the Cardiff Capital Region with advice, training and resources to enable children to enjoy the wellbeing and educational benefits of gardening.

Through collaboration with Grow Cardiff, a local charity, the project developed and co-created teaching resources, teacher training and growing activities tailored to the Welsh curriculum. Providing this support to teachers increased their confidence and ability to garden with pupils, allowing more children to enjoy the benefits.

Establishing seed-schools to inspire all

Grow Your Own School engaged 32 primary schools within the Cardiff Capitol Region. Staff from 27 schools joined workshops and eight schools were selected to be Seed Schools – including Stacey Primary School and Gwaelod y Garth Primary Schools (Cardiff) and Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Ynyswen (Rhondda Cynon Taf).

School workshops were designed to combine practical growing advice, with input into developing the Grow Your Own School programme and a new digital toolkit.

Evaluation of the project was supported by undergraduate students internships. The students delivered interviews and surveys, observed school training sessions and prepared written case studies. The students hope to volunteer at autumn workshops to follow the schools’ progress.

Schools responded enthusiastically to activities and engagement, demonstrating clear appetite to grow with pupils, and a need for more support.

Next steps

The project team have secured funding for further engagement with Seed Schools in 2025/26. This will comprise of teacher training sessions, development of a growing plan, and a workshop focused on linking to themes within the national curriculum. Workshops will be open to all primary schools within the Cardiff Capitol Region. The second phase of this project will also include finalising and launching a Grow your Own School Toolkit.

The project team are exploring how activity to support school growing can be expanded nationally, alongside identifying opportunities for research building.