Victor Seymour Infants School in Carshalton is about to transform its outdoor space into a sensory garden, thanks to an unexpected partnership with Dobbies Garden Centre at Woodcote Green—a victory that came after the retailer sifted through hundreds of applications from community groups hungry for support.
The Dobbies Community Gardens initiative has become a lifeline for organisations across the country seeking help to green their spaces and deepen their roots in their communities. This year, Dobbies chose to back 53 local charities and community groups—and Victor Seymour Infants School stood out among the many worthy candidates. The school has been working steadily to develop its garden area, where children can watch plants and food grow from seed to harvest, and now they have the resources to make their sensory garden vision real.
What makes this partnership tangible is what Dobbies brings to the table. The garden centre isn't offering token support; volunteers from the team will contribute hours of labour, while the company donates plants, compost, grow-your-own kits, and essential tools. More than that, the children will benefit from expert guidance on seasonal planting from Dobbies' Green Team—knowledge that transforms a pile of seeds into a genuine learning laboratory.
Jon Hoare, manager at Dobbies Woodcote Green, acknowledged the weight of the decision. "Selecting the successful project has been incredibly difficult," he explained, "but we're delighted to be supporting Victor Seymour Infants School this year." That difficulty speaks to something encouraging: the appetite across communities to build green spaces is real and widespread. Schools, care homes, food banks, allotment societies, and charities all threw their names forward, each imagining what they could create with the right backing.
For Victor Seymour Infants, the timing couldn't be better. The school's passion for creating a sensory garden—space designed specifically to help children's developmental growth through touch, sight, and smell—aligns perfectly with what modern early-years education increasingly recognises as crucial. A garden isn't just a break from the classroom; it's an extension of it. Children learn about seasons, biology, and patience. They develop resilience watching things grow slowly. And for some, hands in soil and plants in motion offer a pathway to learning that concrete and worksheets simply cannot match.
Hoare spoke to the broader philosophy behind the initiative: "Through this initiative, we're helping communities to get growing while creating and enhancing green spaces for local people to enjoy." That's the real win here. It's not charity framed as condescension. It's a garden centre recognizing that thriving communities need green space, and that schools matter. It's a school getting the tools to teach more than curriculum—to teach children how life works.
The sensory garden at Victor Seymour Infants will soon be taking shape, with plants arriving, tools ready, and expert advice flowing. Across the country, 52 other organisations will be planting and building too. For a generation of children in Carshalton, their school garden is about to become the place where they discover that growth—both in gardens and in themselves—takes patience, care, and community backing.