Ryebridge’s 12 Days of Christmas
To mark this year’s festive season, we wanted to reflect on some of the work the company has been involved with in our local communities, and also look ahead at what 2025 has in store.
On the third day of Christmas…
Making a sensory garden into a reality
Ryebridge is proud to support Woodlands Secondary School, a Luton-based special needs school for students aged between 11-18 years old.
The school caters for students with severe learning difficulties or profound and multiple learning difficulties, many of whom also have additional complex needs including autistic spectrum disorder, epilepsy, physical or sensory impairments.
Around 18 months ago teacher Selina Young attended a Climate Action Teachers Champion (CATCh) programme, Luton’s flagship initiative aimed at helping teachers and local schools access resource and support in delivering and embracing sustainability.
CATCh has been specifically designed to help teachers embed climate change and sustainability within their learning programmes, and to help school leads and senior leadership to understand how they can access local resources, funding and support to help launch their school Climate Change Action Plan.
Following this course, and with consultation from the school’s Eco Council, she decided to create a sensory garden in the school grounds to provide a calm space to help students regulate away from the school environment.
The aim was to create a quiet, peaceful and pretty area incorporating elements which are visually appealing, smell nice and potentially even taste good as well.
With a bursary from the course she bought a wooden structure to provide shelter, but needed the area to be wheelchair accessible as well, only to receive quotes for groundworks in the region of £4-5K, which made the project impossible to finance.
Fortunately the school’s careers department partners with London Luton Airport, who put them in touch with Ryebridge, and managing director Sean Scully went to Woodlands to see first-hand what was needed: “I found the visit quite inspirational - the enthusiasm and passion for the students was quite overwhelming and we will be delighted to help complete the groundworks for them free of charge.”
A team of apprentices from Ryebridge – supervised by project manager Don Wall - will be carrying out all of the necessary work early in the New Year.
Selina said: “We’re really grateful for the groundworks, and want to raise money for Ryebridge’s charity partner Luton Foodbank as a way of saying thank you.”
Fundraising efforts will involve a non-school uniform day where students will be encouraged to wear the Foodbank’s colours of grey and red.
The proposed site of the sensory garden.