East London school pupils flourish at the rhs Hampton court Palace garden festival

On Monday, July 3rd, seven pupils from TCES East London School had the opportunity to attend the Royal Horticultural Society Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. These pupils had been working with Apicultural in their nature garden, where they designed and built a mini climate change and wildlife garden. They were selected to exhibit their garden at the RHS Garden Festival.

Update: Our Bug Barrel appeared on BBC Gardeners' World, which you can watch on BBC iPlayer (skip to 56:00). Also appeared on RHS Campaign for School Gardening website here.

The event garnered significant attention, with press, top garden influencers, and BBC reporters present to capture film content and conduct interviews. Mark Patterson from @ApiculturalLdn accompanied the pupils, staff, and our East London school Headteacher, Jeff Lastiotis, guiding them through the garden and visiting their exhibit. 

Our pupils began in 2018 with 3 raised beds in their garden. This grew over lockdown in 2020 where Mark Patterson, Apiculture did three days a week of gardening with the pupils. We built a green house, planted wildlife garden, built compost bins, stag beetle habitat and planted hundreds of bulbs, built bird boxes and bee hotels. The construction of bird boxes and bee hotels provides homes for important wildlife species. In 2021, we engaged almost every class in the school. Gardening was seen as beneficial after many of our pupils were stuck indoors through much of lockdown. We invested in building new growing beds, a better green house and shed. Some of the garden items, planters and shed were donations from the Ritz Hotel Piccadilly which are also one of Mark’s clients. Such support and collaboration from the community can make a significant difference in enhancing the garden and providing valuable resources. 

Here we have feedback on the pupil's work from Mark Patterson: 

"Pupils from ELIS have been working on their Hampton court palace flower show bugs barrel exhibit since March.

Students were given a brief to design a miniature wildlife and climate change resilient garden that would fit within a metal oil drum. The students took inspiration from features in our own school garden incorporating dead wood habitats to encourage rare stag beetles, bee hotels to encourage leafcutter and mason bees and pollinator friendly flowers. We also chose plants that are food for butterfly and moth caterpillars to encourage insects to lay their eggs in our garden and breed.  At the centre of the design we included a small water feature to attract pollinators like the BatMan Hoverfly to breed. These insects need stagnant water to lay their eggs in. The hoverfly is so named because it has a Batman logo on its back!

The exhibit also features artwork by students depicting some of the wildlife they wanted to encourage and photos of wildlife taken in the school garden. We used wood carving tools to carve out insect designs onto wooden logs and did some Lino prints of insects which were attached to the barrel.

It was an opportunity for the pupils involved to see their hard work on display alongside the work of other schools and a chance to explore the world's biggest flower show which attracts over 160,000 people annually.

We’ve already won a healthy schools award and an award from department for environment last year, so this is another chance for pupils to see their hard work and efforts recognise." 

The progress and achievements of the TCES East London Garden Project is truly inspiring, showcasing the positive impact of hands-on learning and environmental stewardship. TCES East London is also part of the Royal Horticultural Society's schools gardening program. This free scheme provides regular updates and resources for schools to get involved in gardening, especially those with little to no expertise in this area. The program offers opportunities to participate in events like national compost week, sunflower growing challenge, and international bee day. Through our school's horticulture program, our pupils have been able to demonstrate their understanding of sustainable living and the relevance of the seed to plate concepts to their everyday lives.

We received feedback from our pupils about their barrel design:

“I like planting the climbing beans like in Jack and the giant beanstalk story.”

“I like to plant things and watch them grow.” 

 

 

“I really liked taking part in the construction jobs, building our green house, laying the patio slabs, and erecting the shed.”

“Harvesting the honey from the beehives was really interesting.”

The following are some of the feedback we received from our teachers:

“Our pupils have reaped the physical, social, emotional, and mental health benefits of being surrounded by nature in the school garden." – Teacher, Roxy Brown, East London School.

"Students are learning important life-skills through gardening and integrating all areas of the school curriculum into their garden activities.” – Teacher, Rosemary Temen, East London School.

During the festival, the pupils engaged in various activities, including the 'Kubb game' and 'Hapa-Zome' printmaking. The Kubb game, originating from Sweden, involves throwing wooden batons to knock over wooden blocks. It is a fantastic outdoor game for families and children. Hapa-Zome, on the other hand, is a Japanese term meaning 'leaf-dye.' It is an expressive arts session where plants are smashed to release their natural pigments onto cloth. 

The day at the festival was filled with the beauty of the diversity of the flowers and the impressive exhibits of other participants. The pupils thoroughly enjoyed exploring the garden and the Floral Marquee. TCES East London looks forward to participating at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival again in 2024, anticipating another successful year.