When ShefFood talks about “fast food”, we aren’t talking about takeaways or processed chain meals. We mean quick, impactful, community-centred action that nourishes our city. Arbourthorne Community Primary School is a fantastic example of this and our “fast food” hero of this week.
Over the past four years, pupils and staff led by Environmental and Gardening Lead teacher Angela Hiley have transformed the school’s outdoor grounds into an award-winning growing space. Step onto the plot, and you will find kids saving tomato seeds, weaving willow, and even growing tropical turmeric.
Rather than treating the garden as an optional extra, Arbourthorne Community Primary School has woven it into the school’s daily life, creating activities that connect classroom education, practical life skills, and long-term community and climate resilience.
Bringing the Curriculum to Life
The growing space serves as a living lab where the national curriculum moves from the blackboard into the soil. Science and geography lessons become hands-on experiences that help abstract concepts click for young minds.
When Year 5 pupils study plant reproduction, for example, they do so by propagating strawberry runners and taking rosemary cuttings. To build a developed understanding of food and nature as children grow, each class takes ownership of a specific fruit, vegetable, or tree species as they move up through the year groups.
By observing the fruits of their labour, tracking changing weather patterns, and tending their crops week by week, pupils gain a deep, practical understanding of natural cycles that stays with them for life.
Plot-to-Plate Life Skills
Beyond science, the garden equips children with tangible life skills that they might not have experienced otherwise. Pupils learn the art of seed saving early on, carefully harvesting dried marigold heads and extracting tomato seeds, storing them over winter, and planting them again the following spring to experience the complete cycle of growth.
These growing skills feed directly into Flourish, a dedicated community kitchen on the school grounds where pupils and parent volunteers learn to cook healthy meals from scratch. A resident chef works alongside Angela, requesting specific crops to be grown or building seasonal recipes around whatever is currently ready to harvest.
The garden’s abundance is constantly shared with the wider community:
- Family Feasts: Every month, parents and children sit down together to share a hot, nutritious meal cooked using produce grown just metres away in the school polytunnel.
- Community Barrow: Freshly harvested vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers are distributed to local residents through a weekly food barrow.
- Spring Plant Giveaways: Young plants are handed out every spring so families can start growing food in their own gardens or on windowsills.
- Annual Horticultural Show: Each September, the school welcomes pupils back from the summer break with a celebration where children proudly display the fruits, vegetables, and flowers they nurtured at home over the holidays.
Cultivating Resilience
Ultimately, Arbourthorne Community Primary School’s growing space is planting the seeds for future resilience, showing how local action can address broader environmental and social challenges.
At a green level, the garden offers a great example of climate adaptation and nature-based solutions. Whenever it rained, the area around the school’s polytunnel became too wet and muddy; the team responded with thoughtful, sustainable design. They installed water butts to collect and store rainwater that would otherwise run off to the ground, and planted a bed of willow to absorb excess runoff. Once grown, that same willow is harvested alongside dried garden flowers to be used as a sustainable resource for our Maker curriculum and used in such things like winter wreath-making workshops for families, creating a closed-loop system where nothing goes to waste.
Socially, the garden acts as a neighbourhood hub that brings people together across generations. Community partnerships strengthen this sense of collective care, including a monthly collaboration with GoodGym Sheffield. During the main growing season, a team of 10 to 12 volunteers runs up the steep hill from the Showroom Cinema in the city centre to lend a hand with digging, weeding, and building, before running back down!
Watch Angela’s Fast Food Showcase
Arbourthorne Community Primary School is an inventive example of how integrating food, education, and community can help change people’s outcomes for the better, both today with free accessible food and for future generations with kids that know how to grow.
Angela Hiley’s work is the latest feature in ShefFood’s summer Fast Food campaign. To watch Angela’s full showcase video, follow us on Facebook and Instagram @sheffoodsocial. Discover more local food stories on the blog, or sign up for our monthly newsletter.