Another new grant – from City Bridge Trust for ‘Botany on Your Plate’!

We are delighted to have just been awarded £76,500 from the City Bridge Trust for an exciting new project, ‘Botany on Your Plate.’ The project will provide a range of activities introducing both children and adults to the science behind our food plants, helping people to understand where the food on their plate comes from. The project will start this autumn and take place over the next three years.

‘Botany on Your Plate’ will help people to engage with the plants and natural world around them, through discovering the environmental wonders of food plants. The project will encourage children and adults to grow food and to understand the local and global environments affecting what they eat. The Institute already offers a well-established, popular programme of educational activities around plant science, from curriculum-based school visits to adult workshops, talks and walks. ‘Botany on Your Plate’ will build on these activities to offer new topics around food plants – with the help of numerous plants growing outside in the SLBI garden. Whilst some people might already grow food at home or in their school garden, the Institute offers the opportunity to examine these plants under a microscope and to see the environments in which less familiar species such as hops, marshmallow and loquat grow.

Marlowe Russell, SLBI Trustee, said: “We are delighted to have received this support from the City Bridge Trust and are looking forward to adding exciting food plant programmes to our activities with both adults and children. It’s so important in today’s world that those in the city as well as the country understand where their food comes from”.

David Farnsworth, Director of the City Bridge Trust said: “City Bridge Trust makes grants of around £20m a year towards charitable activity in Greater London. We hope that this grant to the SLBI will help them continue to deliver vital services to disadvantaged people. We are committed to supporting Londoners to help make our city a fairer place in which to live and work.”

Keep an eye on our website or sign up to our newsletter to hear the latest news of our events related to this project and others.