Grow your school
Enabling primary school children in Wales to enjoy the wellbeing and educational benefits of gardening.
Grow Your School provided primary school teachers in the Cardiff Capital Region with advice, training, and resources to enable children to enjoy the many wellbeing, personal development, and educational benefits of gardening.
The project developed teaching resources, teacher training sessions and growing activities alongside schools, each tailored to the Curriculum for Wales.
School workshops combined practical growing advice, with input into developing educational resources to support teachers delivering school growing projects.
It was developed by the School of Geography and Planning and School of Social Sciences alongside local charity Grow Cardiff.
Gardening offers so much to primary school learning and life. Many schools already do some growing but many want to do more and don’t know how, whilst others aren’t sure how to start.
Establishing pilot seed-schools to inspire all
Grow Your School engaged 32 primary schools within the Cardiff Capital Region.
Staff from 27 schools joined workshops and eight schools were selected to be Seed Schools – including Stacey Primary School and Ysgol Gynradd Gwaelod y GarthPrimary School (Cardiff) and Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Ynyswen (Rhondda Cynon Taf).
Providing support to teachers increased their confidence and ability to garden with pupils.
“Pupils were encouraged to take ownership of the gardening, bringing in their own seeds and being given the opportunity to develop areas into wildflower habitats.
“As enthusiasm grew, children started volunteering to garden and water plants at break time, taking the initiative to maintain the plants around the school.
“This culminated in children harvesting, cooking and eating produce right next to the flower beds in which they were grown. You could see the wonder and inspiration flooding into the children.”
— Mr Barnard, Radyr Primary School, Cardiff
Educational resources for all primary schools in Wales
Grow Your School spent time listening to primary teachers who wanted straight forward support to gain confidence in growing, and embed it within learning.
In response, a new online Grow Your School toolkit was created alongside participating schools, with insights from research to create evidence-based resources that link to all six Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLE) within the Curriculum for Wales.
Packed with a library full of accessible gardening resources including lesson plans, videos and worksheets, the toolkit shares growing experiences from our Welsh schools to inspire and encourage all primary schools in Wales to get involved and embark on their own growing journey.
Grow your School toolkit
Get in touch
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Funders
Grow your School was funded by Cardiff University’s Civic Mission Progression Fund, the South East Wales Civic Engagement Partnership, Impact funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Educational resources and activities for teachers, schools and colleges
Explore our range of educational resources and activities for teachers, families and school pupils of all ages which aim to raise aspirations and support teaching of the new curriculum in Wales.
