Schools
One of Surrey Gardens Trust's principal aims is to encourage schools to improve their grounds and to create, or further develop a garden that would facilitate children’s learning through play and environmental awareness. We believe that if children can learn about the natural world by becoming involved in appreciating and caring for a garden around their school, they will continue to value the land around them in future life.
Schools can obtain valuable resources and information about a range of gardening based activities and primary science programmes about plants from the Gardens Trust. These resources are suitable for teachers as well as volunteers seeking to make a worthwhile contribution to educating children about gardening. Please visit the Gardens Trust for more information.
Surrey Gardens Trust Awards for Schools
The Trust makes small grants to Foundation Stage, KS1 and KS2 schools to assist with projects that improve their school grounds and give children the opportunity to grow plants and to extend their wider learning of the environment. The Trust has given awards to over 100 schools during the past 10 years.
Schools Grant Awards in 2024
In 2024 the Trust received 40 applications from Primary, Junior, Infant and Nursery schools across Surrey. This year we awarded a record £7,552 to 35 schools through this scheme. The amounts given to each school varied depending on their requirements, with a range of smaller amounts or the Trust contributing a particular part of a larger project. We would like to thank Squires Garden Centres for their generous donation of £200 worth of garden vouchers to distribute to eligible schools. They continue to support our work annually and we are most grateful.
Projects included borders to encourage wildlife, the creation of a sensory garden, building raised beds or planting troughs, purchasing plants, seeds and equipment and renovation or creation of a wildlife pond. Many of the requests submitted included children’s work and evidence of their involvement in the planning process.
The importance of well-maintained outside spaces in school grounds cannot be underestimated. They are vital for learning opportunities and the mental health and wellbeing of children and staff.
Thank you to everyone who applied and congratulations to every school that received a Schools Grant Award this year.
Ideas for your school grounds improvement projects
Wildflower areas to attract bees, butterflies and insects
Growing plants from seeds
Installing raised beds
Buying tools and equipment
Building compost areas
Planting trees and hedges to attract wildlife
Creating a pond or bog garden to attract pond life
Creating a sensory garden
comments from recipient schools
“‘This is such fantastic news! Thank you so much to the Trust for accepting our grant application for our Jubilee Garden.’
‘Thank you so much for awarding us £200 for our sensory space, we are very excited to get started!’
‘Thank you so much for awarding £100 for our grow house. This money will be put to fantastic use and will really help with our plans for vegetable growing with the children.’
‘Thank you so much for your email and as you can imagine, it was smiles all around at school this week. Our outside environment is so precious to us and £200 will make such a impact on the development of our sensory garden for the children.’
‘We have quite a team of budding horticulturalist in the school, and I know that our environment has been instrumental in motivating the children to find out about and love growing plants.’
‘Thank you very much for the award money! I am sure the children will love their new tools.’
‘We were delighted to hear that we had been allocated a grant towards the plants for the pond in our Environmental area. Hopefully, the brown gravy it resembled will soon be a thing of the past! The Squires voucher will also be extremely useful. Thank you. I think we will prioritise the native plants’
Thank you so much for your email, we are absolutely delighted and incredibly grateful to hear that you are supporting our gardening project to develop our reading bus outdoor garden. As you will know from reading our application, this generous grant from Surrey Gardens Trust of £150 forms part of a larger fundraising project that we are working on to develop this outdoor area within our school.”