Get Your Grown-Ups Growing

The RHS launched its Get Your Grown-ups Growing Day on the 1st of October 2009 at Neasden Primary School in Hull, where every pupil got involved in a gardening activity. Blue Peter Gardener, Chris Collins and RHS Regional Advisor, John Hickling were also present and helped out with the day's activities. This month-long drive to get parents and the wider community to support school gardening formed the next stage of our Campaign for School Gardening. Piloted in Yorkshire, 83 schools registered to take part in the day, and so off the back of this success, plans are underway to roll this initiative out nationwide in October 2010.

Greenhouse Competition Winner

Participating schools also had the chance to enter the Win a Greenhouse Competition, with the chance to win a fantastic Hartley Botanic greenhouse worth over £2000, and some brilliant kids’ gardening books. The RHS is pleased to announce that the winning school is Hawthorn Primary School from Doncaster.

Pupils enjoying their new greenhouse

Hawthorn School has its very own gardening club called HEGHOGS (Hawthorn Eco Gardeners Helping Our Green Spaces), and members along with the grown-ups got involved in many activities during the day. This included lots of digging and making both scarecrow and floral displays. To find out more about what Hawthorn Primary School got up to on their GYGUG Day please see the downloadable document below:

• Download Hawthorn Primary's GYGUG Day Agenda (38.3KB, .pdf)

Parents and pupils from Hawthorne Primary making scare-crows in the school garden

Wold Newton School from East Yorkshire came runners up in the competition. One of the highlights of their Get Your Grown-Ups Growing Day was planting a bulb maze with the parents. Every child in the school planted some daffodil bulbs to make a new snail maze.

Wold Newton Transporting fruit trees and labour to the planting site

Highlights from Get Your Grown-Ups Growing Day across Yorkshire and Humber:
# Gardeners' Question Time at St. Johns Beverley with the children on the panel. As a result of the day, parents worked hard at St. Johns Beverley to build a greenhouse, manure beds and make a bulb maze and 5 parents are attending the school weekly to garden.
# Scarecrow competition at Thomas More Hull, with over 60 scarecrows and judged by a local celeb and some very hard working parents.
# Healthy cooking (Food for fitness ) at Great Coates near Grimsby.
# A great turn-out at Warmsworth with124 Parents and 120 children turning up and gardening with their children (Key stage 1 only).
# Grannies got involved with the gardening at Scunthorpe, and are now coming in regularly.