September 2025

Alex Hall
Sep 11
5 min read

Welcome back!

We hope everyone had a chance to rest and recharge over the summer. While school was out, a few exciting developments have been quietly taking root in your gardens.

Morecambe Bay Primary School has started planting a lavender maze. It’s still early days, but the layout is in place and the plants are settling in. Over time, this will become a calming space for children to explore and play.

St Mary’s has begun work on a sensory garden. A path and bench need to be installed, but the area is gradually filling with plants chosen for their textures, scents, and colours. The aim is to create a peaceful corner for reflection and sensory engagement.

The Gardening Club at Sandcastles Nursery and Beach School has been busy harvesting their summer crops — including beans, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes. The children have enjoyed tasting what they’ve grown and even experimented with Takami zome, a Japanese technique for dyeing fabric using plant pigments. This activity also gave them a chance to explore colours and shapes, practice fine motor skills while collecting leaves and petals, and learn to aim the hammer carefully — at the flowers, not their fingers!

After School Clubs: The Sustainables 2025-2026

After a successful first year, our after school club program The Sustainables is back and ready to get more kids outside with their hands in the soil! This year we are excited to be starting the clubs at four new schools: Morecambe Bay Primary, Trumacar Primary, Mossgate Primary and Westgate Primary. The club kicks off on Monday 8th September and will continue right through until the end of the school year in July 2026. The clubs, led by Outdoor Learning Officer Olivia Grundy, will be a place where children can learn to grow food and connect with nature through a variety of meaningful outdoor activities. From growing a school allotment to camp fires and roasting marshmallows, The Sustainables is ready for an action-packed, nature-filled year.

We are also celebrating that leading on from the success of the first year, the club will continue to run in Ryelands Primary and St Patrick's Catholic Primary. The clubs will be led by school staff who, after working closely with Olivia, are confidently leading by themselves using the planning, resources and skills acquired during the first year. This highlights the important role of school staff in making this project sustainable for the future. Successful collaboration means more children will be able to benefit from access to outdoor education and the seeds of a more nature-connected future can travel further.

Outdoor Education in Rural Schools

We are looking forward to returning to the rural schools this new academic year! This September Olivia will return to Leck St Peter’s CE Primary, Quernmore CE Primary and Hornby St Margaret's CE Primary to lead more nature-based outdoor education.

In the previous term, the children were able to get the most out of the school's allotments. They experienced the joy of harvesting and eating directly from the garden. At Hornby, children as young as 5 were able to identify edible plants such as nasturtium and borage. During the lunch time gardening club at Leck, children invented their own culinary dishes mixing gooseberries, mint leaves and raspberries that delighted their taste buds and their senses. At Quernmore, some of the older children rolled their sleeves up and helped to clear the allotment ready for the autumn term, whilst the younger ones grew lettuce and strawberries to share with the rest of the school. Whether it was planting blubs, growing lettuce or exploring their local eco-systems, the children were engaged and eager to learn.

This September we are aiming for something even bigger and better! On the 19th September, at Hornby St Margerets, the three rural schools are coming together for an epic afternoon of outdoor learning and feasting! We will join together for a picnic lunch, followed by a carousel of nature-based activities. We will also be celebrating the season by pressing apples and telling stories

over a camp fire. It is set to be a wonderful event and is only possible thanks to active collaboration with the schools involved. This will set us up for a productive new school year, whereby more children are able to access nature and eat the fruits of their labour, literally!

What to grow now.....

As the new school term begins it's time to get growing again. The soil is still warm, and there's usually enough rain to help young plants settle in. If you're looking for simple, low-maintenance crops that work well with children and school schedules, here are five of the easiest things to plant this month:

Garlic is one of the simplest crops to grow. Just plant individual cloves directly into well-drained soil, pointy end up, and let nature do the rest. It needs very little attention over winter and will be ready to harvest in early summer.

Like garlic, onion sets (small immature onions) are easy to plant and require minimal care. They overwinter well and give children a chance to observe slow, steady growth through the colder months.

Spinach grows quickly and is hardy enough to cope with cooler temperatures. It’s ideal for autumn sowing and can be harvested within weeks. It’s also a great crop for encouraging healthy eating.

Spring onions are quick to grow and don’t take up much space. They’re a good choice for containers or raised beds and can be harvested in early spring, making them a great crop for term-time projects.

Radishes are fast-growing and perfect for short-term projects. They can be sown directly into the soil and harvested in just a few weeks, giving quick results and a sense of achievement.

Don't forget if you need seeds or plants Alex and her funding ninjas may be able to help or if you would like someone to come into school and lead a session planting your Autumn crop we're one click away.

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Invitation to help shape new Lancaster Community Farm

LESS and North Lancashire's FoodFutures partnership recently bought a piece of land off Ashton Road for a new community farm. You are invited to feed into the co-design process!

You can find out more about this project and how to feed in here.

As part of this please complete this survey by the end of September to share your ideas for the new site. You can also join one of the upcoming events (see below) that will also help to shape the site's development - especially the open day on the 4 October (book here to get a reminder).

And if you can help to spread the word, even better! Please ask Alex to email a copy of the poster.

Upcoming events

30 September: Biofertiliser workshop with Matt Dunwell. Book here.
3 October: 10:00 – 14:00. Regenerative Enterprise Workshop. Book here.
4 October: 11:00 – 15:00. Summerhouse Farm Open Day.
12 October: 10:00 – 17:00 Water harvest design workshop. Book here.
8 November: 11:00 – 14:00 Permaculture design unveiling & REcommoning exhibition. Book here

If you have any questions or want to know more please contact anna@lessuk.org