Sophie Blewitt, Head @ Hanford Prep
Freshly picked berries, vegetables, salads and apples straight from the kitchen gardens form a significant part of the daily menu at Hanford Prep, a school where food miles are counted in feet, writes Head Sophie Blewitt. With working kitchen gardens of over 400 square metres and extensive orchards, Hanford has a long and proud tradition of food sustainability.
Our school chef, Emma, and the catering team, prioritise foods grown in the gardens, ensuring that girls are aware of the link between nutrition, sustainability and the food they eat. Exploring culinary delights such as Thai salads and wild garlic pesto alongside more traditional British dishes of apple and rhubarb crumble, means that pupils have a broad and rich diet from the school’s gardens.
In a school that celebrates the outdoors, it should be no surprise that girls take an active part in the gardens here. They proudly take responsibility for individual garden plots which they design, curate and tend to, with a group of volunteer parents helping on a weekly basis.
Emma leads the team with inspiring menus and a passion for high-quality homecooked food for the girls. Morning break and the afternoon snack (known as ‘Milk and Buns’) form an important part of the girls’ daily nutritional intake. Packets of sugary biscuits are not on the menu, but handmade focaccia, hummus, vegetables sticks and cheese straws are, ensuring girls can focus and learn without the kinds of sugar highs and lows created by many highly processed foods.
The past two decades of research into the importance of nutrition in schools confirms what Hanford has always known; a wide variety of home grown, unprocessed foods cooked with love and care by a catering team known personally to pupils produces positive outcomes for learning and a lifelong positive relationship with food.
Hanford is known for many things – riding, the outdoors, freedom and childhood – but it is also known for its walled gardens which have been providing food for the estate’s residents since 1623. Some four hundred years later, our pupils continue to benefit from a tradition of wholesome, unhurried food, where meal times are not rushed but enjoyed and celebrated.