A garden that can grow young minds

Gardening, she says, makes you communicate and learn tenses. "When did we plant that seed? How long will it take to grow?" Another big plus has been learning from the asylum seekers, many of whom, she tells me, are terrific gardeners.

This week South Harringay Infants won our first Capital Growth award for school gardens, run in conjunction with this newspaper. The category was Climate Cool Garden and they won because they had managed to create a garden in their school, which has no green space. They used old tyres and sinks for beds and this year the parents at the school built sturdy raised beds for carrots, courgettes, beans and onions.

Their garden is in a narrow alley between the school and a footpath which, says Clare Panjwani, who along with Lucy Jaffe has masterminded the garden, was always full of rubbish. "Tins, plastic bags and all sorts of junk. But now people stop and look and engage us in conversation," she says.

I've been joined by Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins, who expands on the ways gardens help the curriculum. "I was useless at maths at school, but when I began gardening, I realised I needed it. You're told to plant the beans 10cm apart. Working that out, in a practical way with your hands in the soil, is much easier to understand than those abstract problems about cars going 50mph for four hours. You also learn botany and chemistry, about plant reproduction and the weather."

Lucy and Clare, whose two children Ruby and Leon are at the school, run a gardening club every Friday morning. They take groups of four to six children and teach them how to grow things.

Sitting on a low bench in the garden, Chris Collins gives a group of eight a quick masterclass. We're making individual greenhouses out of old two-litre plastic water bottles — cut a big window out of the side, leave the last two centimetres at the bottom of the bottle, make holes in an old cardboard coffee cup, fill it with earth and plant a small, 3cm-high lettuce. Then put some water in the bottom of the bottle and place the cup inside.

"You now have a greenhouse," he proclaims. The children are thrilled: they're all nationalities and a couple of girls are wearing veils. They set to with scissors and earth and in 15 minutes we have a neat row of greenhouses.

Tinka Rojas describes the garden as "the soul of the school", which pleases Chris as he is very conscious that there is a spirituality connected to growing, a way of getting us in touch with nature, an instinctive need we all have.

"That seedling is relying on you now for its water and its life," he tells a young girl with pigtails.

"It's really hard for kids to find ways to be successful," says Chris, "but growing a vegetable and then eating it: now that's success on anyone's measure."
Rosie Boycott is chair of London Food