Three Places, One Project

At SP Idzbark, the “from garden to table” project took root in three different places at once. The first was a field on a partner farm, where the school grows its own potatoes and pupils followed the whole cultivation process, from planting through care and observation to harvest. The second was the vegetable garden on the school grounds, established the previous year, where beds were sown, planted, watered, weeded and harvested throughout the seasons, irrigated with water collected in the school’s own rainwater tank. The third was the orchard in Stare Jabłonki, a space for observing fruit trees and carrying out seasonal maintenance. In all, 22 students and 4 teachers took part in setting up and tending the plots — 200 m² in the field and 4 m² in the school garden — each site adding its own chapter to the project’s guiding idea.

From Seed to Harvest

Across the year, pupils prepared beds, sowed seeds and planted vegetables and herbs, then cared for them by watering, weeding, loosening the soil and watching them grow — always with rainwater drawn from the school’s tank. Potatoes, apples, radishes, dill, parsley, lettuce, oregano, marjoram, peppers, tomatoes and strawberries all came out of the ground or off the trees this year. In the partner farm’s field, pupils planted and later harvested the potatoes, learning to spot common pests and the ways to manage them along the way. At the orchard in Stare Jabłonki, seasonal fruit-tree care and harvesting rounded out the picture, giving pupils a full sense of an orchard’s rhythm and the seasonality of a harvest.

Growing the Organic Way

The garden, orchard and potato field were all run along ecological, sustainable lines. Garden waste was composted and returned to the soil as natural fertiliser, and rainwater irrigation kept water use efficient throughout. Pupils regularly weeded and inspected the beds, learning to recognise the most common pests and diseases; in the potato field, Colorado potato beetles were removed by hand rather than with chemical treatment, and pupils also discussed other natural methods of crop protection, from removing infected plant parts to encouraging beneficial insects. Through it, students came to see organic growing not as an abstract idea but as a set of daily, practical choices.

Zero Waste, Shared Table

The project’s zero-waste side ran through a series of workshops: a composting workshop on turning garden waste into fertiliser, a “Saving Water in the Garden” session built around the rainwater tank, and biowaste-sorting workshops on responsible resource management. The “From Garden to Table” culinary workshops brought it all together, with pupils cooking healthy dishes from vegetables and herbs grown in their own garden — six apple recipes and two potato recipes in all — turning the season’s harvest into a shared meal and putting the idea of a circular, local food economy into practice.

Beyond the Garden Gate

The project also reached well beyond the beds and orchard rows. Pupils took part in the nationwide programmes “Where Do Ecological Products Come From?”, “Z Ekologią na Ty” and “Wszystkie dzieci z e-waste”, and worked with the local Forest District on nature workshops, field trips and tree-planting on the school grounds. Earth Day, a “Clean Up the World” campaign and an Eco-Fashion show celebrating reused materials brought the whole school together, while the Association of Municipalities of the Ostróda-Iława Region “Czyste Środowisko” led workshops on waste segregation and recycling. Field trips to the Iława Lake District and the Dylewo Hills Landscape Park Complex gave pupils a closer look at the region’s own biodiversity. Taken together, these activities helped pupils build a broader sense of responsibility for the environment, alongside the cooperation and hands-on skills they were already growing in the garden.