Incredible Edible Lambeth has a small pot of funding to support food growing in schools from April – October 2025. This is a pilot project managed by IEL and funded by Lambeth Council’s Public Health team.

Application deadline: 10pm on 23rd April – apply here.

Opportunities for schools:

Plant give away

We will have 15 small packs of plants to give away in April, May and September 2025. These will be allocated on a first come, first served basis and we will ask you to pick up the first of the plants from Myatt’s Fields Park on 25th April between 10am and 4pm.

If you have a small space, apply for just one pack – but if you have a larger space, you can apply for up to 3 packs. Obviously the support we can offer is limited, so please be realistic about what you need. A pack is enough to plant up 5-6㎡ of bed space.

What’s in the packs:

• April: chard, perpetual spinach, broccoli, parsley, beetroot, lettuce, onions, spring onions and kohlrabi
• May: chillies, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette, squash, butternut squash, summer leeks, kale, aubergine, sweet pepper, climbing French beans and basil

To apply, check the box below, choosing the size of box you need. They will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Food growing support at your site:

We can offer 2 schools the following support.

• A large pack of plants in April, May and September

• Support from our gardeners on two days a month from April to October. The gardeners can help advise you on developing a food growing garden, support your teachers to learn about growing, and be available during fortnightly growing sessions at the school. They can help you develop resources that support food growing in the school.

• £1000 per school for capital works (eg building or repairing raised beds, buying equipment)

Criteria for the support:

Commitment from senior management to start, or to increase, food growing at your school

Lack of in-house support (and not already receiving food growing support by Lambeth Council)

Commitment to take part in the exemplar programme

EXEMPLAR PROGRAMME

We want to learn from schools that have embedded food growing in the life of the school and in the curriculum. We want to support other schools to learn from you and each other about how to develop exemplary school food projects.

We want to:

• Recruit 2 exemplar schools to pass on their food growing knowledge at workshops in the summer. We can pay £750 per school to contribute to the project (will include an initial interview, contributing to and hosting a workshop, and helping IEL refine the best practice guide to food growing)

• Hold two workshops at exemplar schools where schools can share best practice and learn from one another

• Create a “guide to food growing in schools – best practice” drawing on learnings from the workshops and interviews