Wildlife Garden & Eco Club
West Blatchington Primary & Nursery School has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society 5 Star Gardening school award!
The school has developed a wildlife area to promote the sustainable use of resources and our Eco members meet regularly and encourage their fellow pupils to demonstrate responsibility for our environment through energy efficiency campaigns and recycling.
Please read our fabulous Blatch Patch magazine and find out about all of the wonderful activities we do in our wildlife garden.
The school also operates an extremely popular Gardening Club and holds a Level 5 School Gardening Award from the Royal Horticultural Society. We place strong emphasis on where food comes from and children enjoy planting vegetables and flowers, taking great pleasure from watching them grow.
Our RHS 5 Star Gardening School Award
At West Blatchington Primary & Nursery School we believe in the incredible learning experiences that children have when working outdoors and engaging with nature. In 2013 we began our journey, working through the RHS gardening awards.
For Level 1 we had to show that we were ensuring that the children were being given gardening opportunities and were able to use basic gardening tools and vocabulary. We started an after-school gardening club and children across the school grew plants such as sunflowers, potatoes and beetroot.
For Level 2, we had to demonstrate how we used the garden to extend the children’s learning opportunities. For example, we held workshops in the garden throughout healthy eating week which included a cross curricular treasure hunt!
For Level 3 we continued in ensuring that more children were able to use the garden as an outdoor classroom to enhance learning in all subjects.
For Level 4 we had to demonstrate the children’s increasing confidence in caring for and growing plants, flowers and vegetables. We had an incredible harvest!
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us in this journey: in particular, FOWB and every child who has planted, weeded, dug, watered and cared for the plants and wildlife in our garden!
Finally, well done Mrs Heym for all of your fantastic work with our wildlife garden, gardening club and eco club! We are very proud of what you and the children have achieved!