Grow Your Own Playground gets schools using their gardens to teach children all about plants, animals and the natural world. We run hands on workshops to get pupils making and creating, to learn practical skills linked to all subjects in the curriculum.

We can design and build the garden and organise local corporate volunteers to help. We will then work with a school all year around and take lessons for all year groups to get pupils observing the changes throughout the year and connecting with nature.  The school garden becomes an outdoor classroom that will inspire not just pupils but also the teachers, parents and the local community.We grow a huge range of plants that inspire the pupils to get them excited and surprised about gardening. I run lessons across all curriculum subjects using the garden as a hands on teaching resource.There are now twelve Grow Your Own Playground schools in East London who have totally linked gardening into their curriculum.

Working with school gardens led me to write my first gardening book- Grow Your Own Ingredients-Pasta Sauce. I have also written ‘Homegrown Tea- how to grow and blend your own homegrown teas and tisanes’,  ‘Grow Your Own Ingredients- Ice Cream’ and ‘Grow Your Own Ingredients- Jam & Jelly’.

Please visit my website www.cassieliversidge.com or follow me on twitter and Facebook

If your school is interested in Grow Your Own Playgrounds, please contact me via my contacts page.   Happy Gardening!  Cassie