A Great Place to Be: Lewisham College x the Albany Garden

Marite is a teacher at Lewisham College, who brings a class of learning-disabled students to gardening sessions each week. Here she tells us her story of coming to the Albany. 

I teach maths, English and photography part-time at Lewisham college, four days a week with people with learning disabilities. My first interactions with the Albany started through teaching, when we had two students who wanted a work experience placement. I didn’t know the Albany previously but my colleagues and students knew about it. They started in the garden with David. I would bring them here and they got on really well with it. Through this experience we built a good relationship with David and we discussed the idea of bringing a whole class of 10 students and he agreed. This was just over three years ago, and ever since then we have been coming once a week with my students on Tuesdays – a long time collaboration! I don’t interact with the Albany particularly outside of that but some of my students do! 

Often, I’m very busy with my students so I don’t think about changes within the building but I think the Albany feels busier now than it did when we first started, there are a lot more activities for elderly people, children, people with learning disabilities in my experience. I have seen changes in the garden space over time too. I think for me this has been the most noticeable change as I spend almost all of my time with the students in the garden. There wasn’t a pond before, we helped David install the pond, there has been an increase in plant varieties in the garden and now we even have an area dedicated just to our students to garden where they have built a tent and the students love it. The grass has been allowed to grow much longer in the past year and there are more benches to sit on and enjoy the weather. After Covid the garden was more overgrown but now it looks beautiful. The most recent is the new gravel and fruit tree area, I can’t wait to have more fruit in the garden.  

I would say since coming here that my students interact with the centre more, joining in with activities put on by Heart n Soul such as “Do your own thing” on Saturday. I have seen an increase in enjoyment with the students, they see the changes in the garden as well, they ask lots of questions like “what is going to be here?” and see the completions of the projects they are working on. It’s great for their well-being and to interact with nature. We are very grateful!