HACKNEY SCHOOL OF FOOD
The Hackney School of Food is a cookery school and gardens created by the LEAP Federation with the Chefs in Schools Charity, to provide food education for children and adults in Hackney. The grounds of the multi-award winning cookery school were transformed by architects Surman and Weston from a disused caretaker’s house on the site of the Mandeville Primary School, into a functional space for people of the community to learn cookery skills.
The Head Gardener, Lidka D’Agostino, designed and built the garden from the ground up. The highly productive space has a raised bed kitchen garden which produces fruit and vegetables for the cookery school to use, it has been part of the education process for the Head Gardener to show those who enter the garden the importance of seasonality. The garden is not only used as a place to grow food but also to experiment with wild flower meadows mixed with herbaceous perennials. As the Assistant Gardener, I worked closely with the Head Gardener, Chefs and students to implement the goals of the school, to educate and enhance the wellbeing of the young people within the Hackney community.
The most wonderful part of working at the HSoF, was having the children of the Mandeville Primary join the garden at lunchtime as chicken carers & garden helpers.
Weekly bee keeping sessions and collecting honey with Mandeville Primary students.
