Young gardeners of the year - Kitchen Garden Magazine

A Shropshire 15-year-old has been crowned RHS Young School Gardener of the Year

Ellie Micklewright, from Newport Girls’ High School Academy Trust, started her school’s gardening club from scratch, inspiring a team of 40 students and staff to transform the school grounds. As well as researching, planning and designing the garden, Ellie secured funding from local businesses to help create wildlife habitats, a sensory zone and an orchard.

Secondary schools won across all three categories this year, for the first time in the competition’s seven-year history. The award for RHS School Gardening Team of the Year 2018 went to St Gregory’s Catholic Science College in Harrow, London, where a team of 13- to 15-year-olds have designed and built an outdoor learning environment on a patch of land originally earmarked for a car park. For many of the school’s pupils, the garden serves as their only connection with nature, inspiring lessons across the curriculum. Organic crops are grown, and the team maintains a large community flower bed at the entrance to the local park.

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RHS School Gardening Champion of the Year 2018 is Matt Willer from Reepham High School and College in Norfolk. History teacher Matt launched ‘The Allotment Project’ in 2015 on an abandoned corner of the school playing field. Hundreds of pupils now volunteer, growing organic produce for the school kitchen and creating container gardens using sinks, car tyres and bath tubs.

Find out more and watch the video entries from the winners at https://schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk/SGOTY18

Pic: Ellie Micklewright. Caption: Young School Gardener of the Year 2018 Ellie Micklewright. Picture: RHS/Mark Waugh

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Steve Ott

Steve Ott is editor of Kitchen Garden magazine and started his career as a professional grower, producing everything from cut flowers to vegetables. He has been growing fruit and veg all his life and spends most of his spare time in his garden in the East Midlands. He loves to experiment with crops and varieties he has never grown before and when he isn’t gardening is to be found out in the countryside bird watching and walking his dog Ted.