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Following the huge success of Waitrose’s ‘Grow and Sell’ scheme, the supermarket is once again distributing gardening packs to schoolchildren across the Channel Islands.
The scheme began in 2013 and aims to encourage 7-11 year olds across the UK and Channel Islands to grow their own food to either sell at their school fete or to Waitrose customers. The ‘Grow and Sell’ kit has been specially designed by Waitrose to encourage the cultivation of school vegetable patches and includes seeds, equipment and step-by-step growing instructions for the children. Its aim is to promote the importance of healthy eating and to help children learn about where fresh food comes from.
Last year 14 Jersey primary schools developed their own allotments and grew vegetables including lettuce, courgettes and basil.
The schools use the produce they have grown as a healthy snack or for selling at their school fayre and any money that is made goes back into the school funds.
Yasmine Pereira from Grand Vaux School said: “Planting the seeds and seeing how they grow has been really good fun. We have an area at home where I grow strawberries, apples and pears. At school I chose to grow beetroot which my aunty loves and always has it in salads.”
Department manager retail support for Waitrose St Saviour branch, Darren Le Quelenec, said: Supporting local primaries with our gardening packs will hopefully inspire children to grow their own produce at home. The project is also designed to encourage entrepreneurial skills as schools will be able to sell their own fruit and vegetables outside our shops or at their school fete. Our Waitrose Partners will provide support along the way to help the children grow some bumper crops.”
To encourage healthy competition among the students, each year the schools complete a presentation of their crops to a Waitrose representative demonstrating the variety of crops grown and the different roles the students played in their development. The winning school is decided on pupil engagement, the variety of crops grown, the use of the kits provided and the best use of space to grow their crops for example in the garden, in pots, in planters and more.
Last year’s three winning schools, Grands Vaux, St Clement and Les Landes, won a trip to Woodside Farms to see how locally grown food is produced on a large scale, from plant to plate, with a healthy school lunch supplied by the supermarket.
Waitrose has worked with Woodside Farms for over three decades. The relationship began initially as a supplier of Jersey Royal potatoes and now includes flowers grown for the retailer since 2012.
To accompany the kits a specially designed ‘Grow and Sell’ app is available to advise teachers, parents and children about when to plant their crops and how to care for them. The app also provides information about where food comes from, how it’s produced and environmental issues such as the importance of seasonality and sustainability.
This year’s ‘Grow and Sell’ kits, which were recently given out to schools, will see a change in the assortment of seeds, to provide variety for the schools taking part.
