Our vision

Our plan is to build a Community Garden with 4 distinct zones.

🥕 1. Allotment Zone

At the heart of the garden is our raised bed allotment area. Every year group at Graven Hill Primary School have its own bed to plant and tend throughout the seasons. Surrounding these are shared community beds filled with fruit trees, raspberries, herbs, and vegetables grown by local residents. A Victorian-style handpump will enable children to fill their watering cans. With the help of Bicester Green Gym, volunteers have planted up all the beds.

The food we grow will be shared across the community — and we hope all the schoolchildren will be taking home the fruit and vegetables they’ve helped nurture with their own hands. It’s a place to learn and discover the joy of growing. This zone is nearly complete! All the trees and beds are planted, we just need to finish the self-binding gravel top coat.

🛠️ 2. Workshop Zone

The Workshop Zone will be the project's practical hub — a secure paved space with a large shed, over three tons of rainwater storage, composting bays, a large work bench and seating. It will be the base for community work parties, DIY projects, and future workshops.

We’re planning:

A tool library so residents can borrow tools and equipment for use in their own gardens.
DIY woodworking activities for children, like building bug hotels and bird boxes
Community workshops, from bike repair to composting

With the generous support of DGK, this zone was completed in January 2026. Volunteers then built the composting area and shed storage. In time, we plan to add solar panels to the shed roof — charging our tools and powering lights for evening activities.

🌿 3. Outdoor Learning Hub - the Polytunnel Zone

We’re currently fundraising for an 8m x 15m (50ft!) polytunnel — a huge indoor growing space that will let us grow warmth-loving crops like tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, grapes, aubergines, herbs, and chillies.

Inside, it will be landscaped to include:

A paved area to hose community meets and events
Pergolas and raised beds for accessible gardening
A dedicated year-round outdoor classroom space for the school, and a 1:1 learning area for children who find classrooms overwhelming.

Our vision is for this zone to become a lush, green sanctuary — warm, vibrant, and filled with life. We aim to install the polytunnel and hard landscaping by December 2026, and permanent planting in 2027, ready for it to begin use an an outloor learning hub in the summer term of 2027.

🌸 4. Garden Zone

This is the most imaginative part of our plan — a beautiful, sensory, educational space where people of all ages can meet, relax, and play.

Open to the public at weekends and during school holidays, it will be planted with useful species: edible plants, fruit-bearing shrubs, and others traditionally used for medicine, dyes, clothing, or cosmetics.

We’ll also use this space as a place to trial different sustainable growing methods, such as hugelkultur, allowing us to experiment with low-impact, resilient gardening techniques to learn together and inspire each other. We are setting ourself a goal, that everything used to build this garden will be from recycled, repurposed or reused materials.

We envision:

A seating area large enough for a class
A sensory path and accessible planting
A secret toadstool table for children accessed by hidden paths
A solar-powered water feature children can safely explore
Spaces to display scuplutres and artwork

While this zone will take time to establish and grow, we aim to finish the major landscaping by end of 2027, and open the full garden by summer 2028. We need to fundraise a further £5000 to achive this goal.

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