Cedarbank School

Tomatoes are welcome at lunch

Luttuce drink!

A sunny spot for a leisurely lunch

🌿What was your favourite part of creating your garden?

Our favourite part of creating the garden was how it brought so many students together. Most of the pupils in the school have been involved in some way, from sharing what their favourite lunch is, choosing what to plant, sewing seeds to calculating how much water is needed to grow our lunches.

🌿Did you face any challenges and how did you respond to them?

We faced the challenges of planting a lot of seeds before the Easter holidays, and then a lot of the perishing. This only encouraged us to start again! We used lots of tins and plastic cups to start seedling in but did need to move them into bigger tubs. All the plant pots and tubs used for the garden are ones we already had in the school. Nothing new was bought for the project.

🌿What did you learn whilst creating your garden?

We learnt so much! We realised how many plastic tubs were used everyday for the fruit snacks pupils have at break time. We also learnt how much water is needed to grow our lunches. We researched many litres of water for each of the main plants used in school lunches.

🌿Did you have any links with your local community or a Pocket Garden mentor whilst creating your garden?

We made a link with Darroch Nurseries, just outside Linlithgow. They provide us with a rowan tree to represent the trees grown for the paper bags used for packed lunches.

🌿What will happen to your garden after the competition has finished?

We hope to maintain the garden until the end of term. We will use some of the fruit and veg within classes . We hope to have an end of term seasonal picnic with what is ready in the last week of term for the Outdoor Learning classes to enjoy. The rest of the plants, that are not ready to harvest from will be distributed amongst staff to tend over the summer, bringing back in August or the plants will be planted in some of the growing beds we have.

🌿Is there anything else you would like to share?

Eleven people shared their lunch choices with us. S6 calculated that 24,183 litres of water is used for a school lunch in one day, for eleven pupils. They had researched how many litres required for 1kg of each fruit and vegetables. There are 100 pupils in the school, so approximately 241,830 litres required by all to have lunch for one day. We do know that we have over estimated for some of these. We hope to run an assembly about this so we can encourage people to eat their food a bit more water cautiously.