Schools 

Schools

When you join Gardens for Life, you join a network of like-minded schools around the world. Every garden is different and every school has a different story to tell, but the challenges you face and overcome are often very similar. As a Gardens for Life school we hope you'll share with us what worked and what didn't and help other schools by offering advice. We have inner city schools who have made incredible gardens on roof-tops and in play-grounds and country schools that supply the school kitchens or sell their produce to the local community. Send us your stories, pictures and photographs and tell us how you made your garden happen.

Do I need to have a school garden to be a member?

You don't have to have an established garden to join, but you do need to be committed to creating one and making the most of it. We've got some lesson plans to get your lessons started and we have some great case studies that will give you some ideas on how to get going and a guide on what to grow. To join just fill out he form.

Over the next year we'll be producing new resources and we'll need your help to make sure that it's what you need, it will also help if you can point us in the direction of any other resources you see out there on the web and we'll add the best suggestions to the Gardens for Life website.

Making the most of what you've got

Schools already in the programme have shown that if you engage the right people then you can get a good deal of what you need for free one way or another. School governors can be a useful resource as they have connections that might help, for example the companies they work for might be prepared to sponsor the garden and they might help encourage the school governing body to support it using school funds. Parents and grandparents are another potential asset for the same reason, and they can also help provide in-kind support, e.g. breaking ground (generally a task that most children find difficult), whether by hand or by providing access to equipment, and they often have (or know people who have) the skills you need to get the garden going. You could also approach local allotment associations who might be prepared to give you some seeds or share their expertise. You do need to be careful about who actually gets involved with the hands-on gardening with the children (the school will know about this), and generally a criminal records bureau check would need to be run before anyone not connected with the school is allowed to work with children; this is standard procedure for anyone working with children these days.

Grants

There may be some grants available out there but they are likely to be oversubscribed and the application process and funding cycle may not fit with your own time-frame. We don't offer grants ourselves, or encourage schools to apply for them as Gardens for Life is really about the inspiration that schools around the world have shown when facing the challenges of growing a garden and it makes it much harder for participating schools to be on an equal footing if some have grants while others (especially those in the developing world) have to make do.