Energy Garden works with communities to help redefine cities' relationship with nature

Over the last ten years, Energy Garden has secured funding to negotiate the legal permissions of solar installations; paid staff to oversee the development of community gardens; run 70 schools’ programmes and 6 youth training programmes; and bought the materials and equipment necessary to help communities transform their schools, estates, and overground rail stations into green, health-giving spaces. Across the 20 gardens, over 140 people are now actively involved in Energy Garden, making a positive impact for residents and millions of train passengers.

Inspiring the next generation of Londoners to become environmental champions 

Our schools programme is designed to engage and educate school children in London on important environmental issues relating to horticulture, biodiversity, energy and climate change in the context of the local community. 

We ran our first schools programme in 2016 and, as of 2021, Energy Garden has run 70 school workshops engaging over 2,000 children. Through these sessions, children between the ages of 7 and 13 learn about solar power, electricity, plants and urban gardening. Teachers noted that the strengths of the Energy Garden workshops were:

• Engaging and interactive with practical activities
• Excellent subject knowledge of the team
• Fun & enthusiastic delivery
• Introducing schools to projects taking place in the local area
• Drawing on the children's prior subject knowledge
• Well-resourced learning materials

Curriculum-aligned education and immersive activities: sample workshops

Lesson 1 - Plants

• Categorising plants, with real-life samples
• Interactive card game linked to learning outcomes
• Sow a seed to take home
• Plant a solar hanging basket
• Learn about urban gardening, watering, cultivating and categorisation 

Lesson 2 - Solar Electricity

• Creating circuits- how to make a buzzer buzz
• Experiments with solar panels
• Numerical data collection with graphs

Meet our education lead: Leila Fortunato

Leila has over 17 years' experience working in the education sector as a Teacher of Geography and History, and Co-ordinator of KS3 History, Head of Humanities and History Lead across a number of East London Schools. Since 2014, she has been a Volunteer Director of Banister House Solar, London's largest community-owned energy project on social housing. She is the Founder of Black British Studies, an online school specialising in delivering diverse and inclusive webinars, workshops and flexible online courses to adults and children.

Leila is backed by the entire Energy Garden team. Read more about our staff here. 

A key theme for each key stage  

Leila worked with the Energy Garden team, and in consultation with teachers and pupils, to design workshops that are inspiring, engaging and intersectional. Here is a selection of the knowledge and skills pupils will learn:  

• Key Stage 2: Benefits of solar and practical demonstration of how it works
• Key Stage 3: Exploring biodiversity, surveying interdependence of organisms and food webs and their impact on the urban environment
• Key Stage 4: Mapping areas of poor air quality, green spaces and fuel poverty in London; exploring who is affected and why
• Key Stage 5: Understanding causality & interdependence with the global south using themes such as food security, migration and climate change

Click here for the current brochure which shows all the workshop themes in each key stage.

Would your child's school benefit from environmental workshops linked to the national curriculum?

Get in touch! We are always looking to connect with Londoners who share our values in environment and education. It is our goal to create long lasting relationships with schools so that we can replicate this programme long into the future, benefiting ever more school children. Let's work together to equip our future leaders with the skills they need to create a brighter future! 

Quotes from teachers:

'I think the knowledge of all children was increased through this workshops' - Teacher from Eastfield Primary School

'I would say all of my class learnt something new and increased their knowledge.' - Teacher from Highfield Primary School