After just one day's guidance and inspiration from The Papillon Project, the Academy garden has now sprung back into life. Every lunchtime, a group of green-fingered and hard-working students materialise and transform the allotment, pond area and rose garden. They plant, they water, they weed, and they have been awesome!

As you can see in the pictures, we now have a range of fruit and vegetables growingsuccessfully. There is also a pond-side herb garden in development and another small one in a manger. The roses are glorious - thank you to Peter Beales Roses and Mrs McConnell who first created this beautiful display beside our little outdoor arena.

Going forward, we would like to expand into new green spaces around the Academy site. Current ideas are for a pumpkin patch, more wildflower areas and growing additional vegetables for use in our catering lessons. All plans are to enhance our wildlife (there are still newts in the pond) and grow the allotment sustainably. 

If you would like to support the allotment and garden, contributions would be greatly appreciated. In particular, we need: 

• Potting/general purpose compost
• Pallets for securing our own composting bays
• An hour's use of a chipper
• Flower/wildflower seeds
• A wheelbarrow with a working wheel!

We have registered with the RHS School Gardening Campaign and have already received recognition for all our pupils' efforts. We were quickly awarded their Level 1 award and have very recently gained Level 2; we are aiming to get all the way to their top award - Level 5 - in time.