Our Green School programme offers interventional educational opportunities for young people living with mental health challenges. We offer the chance to gain a City & Guilds vocational qualification ‘Skills for Working Life: Horticulture’ and we are also registered to use AQA's Unit Achievement Scheme's validated units enabling us to acknowledge and celebrate individual achievement. Our aims are threefold: To support the physical and mental health and educational prospects of young people; to engender an appreciation of horticulture and gardening and all that working with and on the land can offer; to encourage our students to appreciate nature, the countryside and conservation.
Students visit the Garden for one full day each week and partake in meaningful, vocational activities throughout the Garden. Activities may include seasonal appropriate propagation, planting, tending, growing, and harvesting as well as practical activities such as the maintenance of garden equipment, building raised beds and tending a garden pond. We make it a priority to try and design the activities around a student’s particular interests and tailor the Garden to suit and engage our students. The Garden has many different areas to it including a formal flower garden, vegetable growing areas and allotment type areas. Because we try to tailor activities to the individual student, many have their own 'private' beds so it is not unusual to see roses growing next to sweetcorn and turnips! The Garden has wheelchair friendly pathways and hand rails throughout most parts, and an area of specifically built raised beds for those less physically able. The Garden has also, over the years, developed many interesting and innovative projects such as a garden shelter with a 'living roof' and a 'living wall' on the centre building planted with sedums.