New Gardening Classroom at Roots and Shoots

Aim

To provide a new purpose built eco-gardening classroom at Roots and Shoots for our students who have Special Needs.

Roots and Shoots is an award winning educational charity based in North Lambeth since 1982. This year 2022 we celebrate our 40th birthday.

Our charity is based at a one acre site in Kennington SE11, with 'green' educational buildings set in mixed planted areas, including a wild garden developed from a derelict ex- factory site, and has been described as a 'green oasis' in the heart of the city.

One of our two main charitable aims is to provide high quality educational programmes for young people (16-24) with learning and special needs. This is directly funded by the Department of Education and local  authorities. But as an independent training provider and a charity we have to fund all the buildings and site maintenance ourselves.

 Due to the success of our training provision we want to extend our beautiful oak 'Apple Barn' (this is is open- fronted)  and was used as our 'Covid Classroom' during the pandemic to keep our students safe.

 By moving our old adjacent potting shed  we will have enough space  to attach a new oak purpose- built section on to the barn. This will provide a wonderful new gardening classroom for our young people,  fully insulated, also using electricity for heat and light generated by our solar panels.

 The classroom currently allocated in our main building is too small for our ten students  in the gardening group as well as our teaching staff and will drastically reduce the amount of mud brought into our main building!

We have been very fortunate to have donated £22,000 from a local benefactor as a deposit and  a further £6030 from  our links with  the community, so we were very excited when one of our 'Aviva' volunteers suggested we apply for the Aviva Community Fund to help us reach our goal of £42,600. All help gratefully received! Many thanks.

This project successfully funded on 20th September 2022