Ustadha Saba Kiani shares an update on Deenway pupils' work in contributing to Reading's community gardens.

In June 2018, a herb garden was designed in school and laid out by the Deenway pupils in collaboration with Dave Richards (Food4families) at Lavender Place Community Gardens in Reading Town Centre. The olive tree was the main feature of this herb garden, placed in the middle, with raised herb beds on the side.

In 2023, the Lavender Place Community Gardens were closed to the public and different parts of the garden were donated to various other locations in the town. The “Herb Garden” was donated to the Oasis Wellbeing Centre Royal Berkshire Hospital on Craven Road (opposite the Maternity Ward) and once again Deenway Montessori School pupils helped in planting the herb patch of the garden. In June 2023, the pupils of Upper Elementary helped Dave and others to plant herbs including the big olive tree as well. UE worked very hard all day long to make this project a success.

The session wasn’t only a gardening session, but in fact turned out to be very useful for growing pupils' awareness of their town's local history, begining with the history of the building where the garden was. Dave explained to students how the building used to be someone’s house on king’s road near the Huntley & Plamer’s factory. Disturbed by the noise from the factory in the early 1900s, the owners decided to move the whole building brick by brick to its current location (Craven Road, Reading). Dave also shared some old pictures with the students and described to them how the garden had looked then.

The children worked hard to transform the rough stony soil patch to a beautiful herb garden. Whilst they were planting, they also learnt the names and benefits of all the herbs and took special interest in asking questions about all the herbs.

The day’s work finished with a relaxing lunch break near the pond on the other side of garden.

In the picture below, you can see how we left the herb garden after the pupils' work in planting the herbs last year in the picture on the left hand side. On the right hand side, you can seee the herb garden in bloom in March 2024: