Edible Rotherhithe: Inspiring children to learn and grow

With thanks to Edible Rotherhithe for writing this Guest Blog:

Edible Rotherhithe is a community food growing, gardening and arts charity based in Southwark, London. It is a local initiative founded by Christina Wheatley a decade ago that works between schools, educational facilities and community centres, to offer food growing, gardening and arts & crafts workshops for children and parents.

We are interested in how gardening and food growing can promote a greater awareness around healthy eating and where our food comes from. Our programme of workshops and after-school clubs explore how practical education can take place across different age ranges outside the classroom, and improve the physical and mental wellbeing and creativity of children and young people.

Where we Work

Edible Rotherhithe works in partnership with Surrey Square School – a primary school based in Walworth, Southwark – who in 2019 gave the go ahead to help transform their outdoor space so it resembles something similar to the home of the Teletubbie.

Following a successful Spacehive crowdfunding campaign, we installed and customised a new 18ft x 16ft polytunnel community garden, including new raised planter beds, on the roof of Surrey Square School’s pavilion adjoining the brow of its hill.

Eight tonnes of soil mix was transferred to the raised planter beds by local volunteers, and corporate volunteers from Hands on London. The new polytunnel garden has enabled an additional weekly food growing and gardening after-school education club.

We subsequently created 150 ft of new safe growing space through an edible garden, green wall and mini-orchard with new fruit trees and bushes, increasing bio-diversity and improving air quality at the School with Southwark Council’s Cleaner Greener Safer funding.

Edible Rotherhithe has also delivered food growing and gardening workshops at other school locations including Dog Kennel Hill Primary School, East Dulwich, and St Joseph’s Primary School and Rotherhithe Primary School. We mainly grow organic food using Rocket Gardens vegetable patches which enables us to lesson plan ahead introducing pupils with seasonal produce. We consult with the local community to grow foods which are appropriate to them.

Food Growing, Gardening and Arts Clubs

The creation of our polytunnel garden at Surrey Square primary school has meant that we are able to run weekly food growing, gardening and arts after-school education clubs and workshops.

The clubs and workshops provide a vital opportunity for local children from nursery age to Year 6 to learn about sustainability and provide them with hands-on experience of growing in a very unique classroom setting. The children develop food growing, gardening and teamworking skills while improving their well-being, confidence and creativity. The clubs and workshops are delivered by a sessional tutor and supervised by an Edible Rotherhithe volunteer trustee, and have previously been funded with small grants by Team London Bridge, Southwark Council Neighbourhoods Fund, Elkins Construction, Arnold Clark and Action Funder. Surplus food harvested from the polytunnel and external raised beds is donated to the School’s monthly Old Kent Road Family Zone community event, benefitting low-income families.

Making an Impact

Edible Rotherhithe has trained hundreds of local children and young people attending on rotation how to plant, grow and harvest their own food and to develop creative skills through nature based arts including printmaking. This is hugely important as the neighbourhood that we work in is one of the top 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in England for quality of local environment (English Indices of Deprivation, 2019).

As a member of the school community puts it:

“It’s always lovely to bring children to gardening club, we really appreciate your hard work. A child who doesn’t speak came up to you and said ‘hello’. The children always look forward to coming to the polytunnel for gardening club every week. They learn so much about healthy fruits and vegetables. Your work is so valuable to us and you are amazing.” – Nazma, Surrey Square School teacher.

Examples of our past projects can be viewed on Action Funder.

Awarded for our work

Edible Rotherhithe has won Capital Growth’s Best Urban Harvest Action Shot of 2023 (top picture, page 1) and, with the Young Food Growers at Surrey Square Primary School, as winner in the Gro Your Best category in the Cultivation Street 2022 Awards which was featured in the Daily Express.

Our founder, Christina Nilsen Wheatley, was awarded The Liberty of the Old Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell at The Southwark Civic Awards, Southwark Cathedral, in 2023; and has previously won Volunteer of the Year at the Southwark Stars award, Tate Modern, in 2019.

Follow our work

Check out our Website, Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn pages!