F U T U R E TA L E N T By Lily Bakratsa
Ambassador for Landscape and Green Plan It 2016 award winner Lily Bakratsa writes about her experience as a student mentor, reveals what she gained professionally from her volunteer work with Swanlea School in Whitechapel, east London, and explains the importance of promoting landscape education in school environments.
1. Students take part in a planting workshop at Swanlea School © Luke Mcgregor
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In August 2016 I received an email from the RHS promoting the Green Plan It scheme: a UK-wide competition on which a professional from the industry would be linked with a local school to design a garden project. As an Ambassador for Landscape, I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce the fundamentals of landscape architecture to students and signed up for the challenge. A couple of weeks later I met my team from Swanlea School in Whitechapel: five Year 9 pupils, all aged thirteen, and their Design Technology (DT) teacher,
Chris Nairn. They were all interested in architecture and design but had limited knowledge of horticulture and plants. Together we formed ‘Team Swanleaf’, and the first decision was to design a garden for the community. All the pupils in the team were residents of Tower Hamlets and had little or no access to green space. Helping more east London residents to experience ‘what it feels like to have their very own garden’ was a topic they wanted to research. We spent a morning discussing, writing down ideas and thinking of potential locations for our community 31
