Kelsale CEVCP Primary Schools charity open garden event
Visit a multi-award-winning garden with a difference! 10 different therapeutic, learning and social spaces designed to welcome nature, stimulate learning (through more hands experiences) and be a place where staff and pupils alike can take time out to calm mind and body. Installed by students and parents who will be there on the day to talk visitors through each area. £2 entry per adult (children free) in aid of St Elizabeth Hospice. Fete type stalls and refreshments available on-site ran by the schools PTFA.
This is a separate event from that run by Kelsale cum Carlton Open Gardens which will take place in June. See event listing for further details.
PRESS RELEASE
HEADLINE: Award-winning children’s garden to open for popular Charity event
(Kelsale, Suffolk – Written on 24th February 2020) a Suffolk School Garden filled with imaginative and interactive outdoor learning spaces is opening for one day only to raise money for local hospice whilst hoping to inspire more Suffolk residents to garden with children.
- The gardens were the vision of a parent who wanted to encourage more children to engage more with nature, growing food and the outdoor environment in everyday life. She did this by designing multiple immersive and inspiring areas in the local school garden. Areas that were supportive and inclusive so every pupil and staff member could both benefit and connect with their environment / the community around them.
- Gardens include Exploding volcanoes made out of a bath towel, Canopy gazing chairs, forest bathing under a 500+-year-old oak tree, prayer trees, plot-to-plate holistic gardens, wildlife areas, landscape themed beds, sensory garden and a theatre of herbs (Suffolk slowest theatre where stories are told using garden gnomes!)
- Work started in the gardens within a week of the new headteacher giving the thumbs up by a voluntary team of Parents, teachers and pupils of the school. All the work was done ‘On a shoestring’ with the help of very resourceful parents and help from local businesses.
- The Garden has now become a flexible resource that has many benefits to the school both for the curriculum subjects taught at the school as well as extracurricular activities and physical/mental wellbeing.
- The garden team wants to inspire more people to look at gardens from a child’s perspective to inspire a love of the natural world.
- The gardens will be open to the public for one day only on 2nd May 2020 11 am – 3 pm as part for the ‘Great Garden Trail’ (For more information on the St Elizabeth Hospice ‘Great Garden Trail’ please contact Beth Condie 07900 653972 / beth.condie@stelizabethhospice.org.uk). The Senior teachers and garden designers will hold a master class on the day for anyone interested in designing a garden with children in mind. There will be a separate masterclass held on the day by Suffolk Master composters. Refreshments and fete style stalls on the day ran by the PTFA
QUOTE – Senior teacher & SENCO Miss Coppens-Browne, Kelsale CEVCP School
“Gardening with children doesn’t have to just be about playing in the mud. There are so many ways that gardens can inspire children to learn and develop in their own homes with very little cost. I’m not just talking about stimulating wonder and love of the natural world. Exploring habitats, wildlife, growing plants and food in the garden delivers a long list of benefits both physically, mentally and educationally. Using a garden to develop Early reading, first steps in counting, sorting, and learning to use senses are all wonderful foundations in early education, whereas older children benefit from real-life problem solving, investigation and applying lessons learnt in the classroom to real-life at their own pace – all in the healthy fresh air to boost the benefits!”
Kelsale CEVCP School is a small rural school near Saxmundham, Suffolk. As press, you are invited for a private viewing at a mutually convenient time to view the gardens ahead of the event to better understand and photograph the areas. If you would like us to supply editorial / a what’s on listing / School supplied photos, please make contact with the below.
