Little Pippins, Harwell
2024 Grant Recipients
Project funded by the Powerhouse Grant - Grant low/medium and project now completed
Our project was to build a beautiful, accessible community garden for our local community. We are a small charity-run pre-school set in an old orchard with wonderful grounds.
By building the community garden in the accessible part of our setting we could offer families a chance to nurture and harvest our produce all year round, giving opportunities to the wide array of families we have in the village.
At least 60 Harwell families engaged with growing and harvesting the produce.
The benefits have been:
Outside involvement from external groups (Harwell Gardeners, garden centres and farm shops)
We have received local groups such as the Harwell Gardeners Club who have come in to tend the garden with the children, sharing their ideas and donating plants and seeds. We were invited by The Gardener’s Club to attend the produce show at the local school and we won huge prizes with our produce, with many coming in first, second and third place and this made us feel very proud. We were also awarded the ‘Harwell Village Produce Show Thompson Annual Trophy’ for the highest aggregate points in the novice classes which was another huge achievement for our volunteers.
Number of parents involved
Over the summer there were long periods of time when the main preschool was closed and we found that Tapestry, an online learning journal worked well in communicating with parents about using the garden. In return, parents would upload photos on Tapestry to share with us of the produce they had grown, picked or even cooked.
Invite other childcare providers and educational settings to share our resources
We have invited another new nursery that has not yet opened its doors, to come up and use the garden, and we have begun talks with them to share and welcome them to our garden, with the hope that they will join us in the future. With the school transitions we have asked local schools to come down and meet the children and continue to follow their passion for gardening.