The Dolphin Garden

Bella Andrew

Priory House L6th Form Dolphin Editorial Team

Within our King's Bruton community, it is important for us to recognise our environmental impact. Sustainability is an important aspect to focus on.

Within Bruton, businesses such as the Roth Bar & Grill, Osip Restaurant and The Newt have taken onboard the concept of sustainability, and are focusing on farm to table. A concept of using locally grown food and taking it directly into restaurants, reducing a large amount of carbon emissions and processing.

In our King's Bruton community, we want to be able to apply concepts like farm to table. Consequently, we have introduced our own allotment, called The Dolphin Garden. This allotment is managed by The Dolphin editorial team, however, anyone can help. It is situated near the Hauser & Wirth allotments, by some of the school greenhouses.

We want to be able to produce locally grown food into our school community. The School already grows its own herbs, but it would be very environmentally friendly to introduce more fresh produce.

To mark the beginning of The Dolphin Garden, next academic year we will be creating a Time Capsule, to be planted within the allotment. It will include a copy of this year’s Dolphin, a gardening book, a newspaper, and anything else which represents how the environment is currently being helped.

Over the course of the academic year The Dolphin Garden allotment team has made great strides towards building the foundations for a new on-site allotment at King's.

The construction of two sturdy raised beds with close access to greenhouse facilities have vastly improved our potential to plant and grow. We have gratefully received generous support from the Friends of King's in terms of essential equipment such as veggiemesh, garden hoops and the essential watering can.

After a gruelling cold winter, this year’s growing season has taken a hit with a slow start, but after recent warm weather both plants and weeds have sprung back into action! We plan to share the fruits of our labour with our BTEC Hospitality department. We are hoping to provide tomatoes, courgettes, sweetcorn, kale, sunflowers and broccoli.

Moving forwards, we plan to develop an all-year round seasonal calendar focusing on sustainable agriculture. We will aim to run the allotment group during an activities session next year, open to all year groups to get involved any interested green fingered pupils. Watch this space as we plan to invite inspirational figures such as Charles Dowding, along with potential trips to The Newt and the Roth Bar & Grill kitchen garden.

A huge thank you to all involved from the Dolphin Team members and the Friends of King's for supporting our project.

Click or scan the QR Code to read about the creation of the Dolphin Garden