12:31pm Wednesday 1st April 2009
PUPILS are looking to lead healthier lifestyles as they plant fruit and vegetables to use for cooking at an orchard built at their school.
Sowerby Primary School, on Topcliffe Road, is working with Garden Organic, an organic growing charity, on the scheme.
Based in Sowerby, near to Thirsk, the school has invited its pupils to help plan the project at which planting began on April 1.
The school held a competition to design the orchard and two winners, Victoria Fleetham and Ethan Cook, picked.
The ideas put into the final plan show the orchard featuring feature apple, pear, quince trees, red and white currants, gooseberries and blackcurrants,.
The work is being funded by the Food for Life Partnership, a National Lottery funded scheme to improve diets.
Jean Yendall, headteacher, said: "Our new orchard will offer wonderful opportunities for our teachers to take the children outside and provide a stimulus for all sorts of learning.
"If we are growing fruit we want the children to eat it and if they pick some then that’s great.
"They can’t wait to get out to gardening club and that’s not just the younger ones – a lot of the ten and eleven year olds are happy to give up their lunch-times to be in the garden."
Sowerby Primary School staff and pupils are also building a nature garden in the grounds which has been visited by environmentalist David Bellamy.
Colette Bond, Garden Organic’s head of education, said: "The children and staff at Sowerby have done incredibly well to get to the stage of planting their own orchard already.
"Being able to taste their own apples and pears will be yet another wonderful opportunity for them to experience the rewards of growing and eating healthy food, which is what this project is all about."
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