Schools 

Case Study

Over the years Gardens for Life has gathered lots of case studies about the great things our schools have been doing. Below is an example, there are lots more in our support pack so join today to find out what everyone's been up to.

Mwenja Primary School, Gardens for Life Kenya

Mwenja Primary School is in agriculturally rich area where smallholder farmers grow maize, cabbages, kale, beans, carrots but their main crops are potatoes and peas. They can get three crops of potatoes and peas a year!  With Gardens for Life we soon had a flourishing and productive garden.

Like the farms around us we noticed that our garden had lots of pests and just as the farmers lost much of their crops so did we. We decided to find a way of dealing with the problem without using chemical pesticides, because they can have harmful side-effects. Our Gardens for Life teacher chose a group of students to find a solution and they started to carry out observations, collect data and conduct experiments. We all studied the plants and how they were affected and asked local farmers how they dealt with pests.

What we found

We had rats, mice,  moles, stalk-borers, armyworms, cutworms, grasshoppers, termites, various birds, hares, aphids, black ant, weevils and moths affecting our crops! We also found that some these creatures actually helped our gardens and protected them against other pests, helped pollinate plants and spread seeds. We found out when, where and how our crops were attacked.

Most importantly we came up with long lists of ways in which crops can be protected. For example, the aphids were deterred from doing damage when onions were grown amongst other crops. Marigolds, blue gum, pepper and other herbs also seemed to repel them.

We learnt an enormous amount through this systematic and collaborative study. We experiences a great sense of achievement and the knowledge gained was taken hole to our families and discussed there. This activity represents an example of socially useful and valuable outdoor learning and how gardening can raise awareness of development issues and encourage children to address them.