Earth Day

This week we celebrated Earth Day and a mission we are keen to promote is ‘farm to fork!’ With 100 acres of pitches, ancient woodland and ornamental gardens to maintain and preserve, the Grounds team at Cheam are always busy whatever the weather.

Adding another environmental string to their bow, they have recently embarked on a kitchen garden to grow our own vegetables and fruit for use in the school kitchens. This is an opportunity for the children to be involved in both the gardening aspect and the cooking when the home-grown produce is used in the ever-popular boarding cookery club.

Michael has led the project creating five new raised beds to keep the rabbits at bay. These are currently home to thriving lettuces, onions, carrots, radishes and herbs and there are plans for large quantities of strawberries and blueberries in fruit cages. He has been liaising with the kitchen team to see what items he can support on producing.

On Monday a small group from the Prep cookery club assisted in planting a variety of lettuces with Michael, a wonderful chance to learn from someone who has a huge amount of knowledge and expertise and of course to get very muddy!

With sustainability high on Cheam’s agenda the Maintenance team have also created large composting bays, enabling us to recycle the kitchen waste and create our own compost for use on site.

Thank you to everyone involved with making Cheam a little more sustainable each term with this on-going programme of initiative and projects.