How RHS Garden Harlow Carr is helping young people engage with sustainability - Paul Cook

We also team up with key partners, like Harrogate College, on collaborative projects that will bring benefits both to the garden and the learners involved.

Our work with the college, which like us, has placed sustainability at the heart of its activities, began in 2021 when we teamed up to produce some menu ideas for the Royal Horticultural Society’s Harrogate Arms Cafe, located within our grounds. This was led by Level 2 Professional Cookery and other hospitality course students who were given a chance, over a year, to demonstrate both their culinary talents and a range of other skills.

The brief was to create visually exciting and delicious dishes that used seasonal produce from our own garden along with other responsibility-sourced ingredients - a task which required plenty of research and experimentation. To really get a feel for the project, the students spent time learning hands-on horticultural techniques too and started growing their own produce, in planters, back at the college.

They visited us again to trial their creations with guests and gather feedback before formally presenting their final menu, which featured everything from an Eggs Benedict and smoothie combination to inventive twists on traditional family favourites, at RHS Harlow Carr.

To say we were impressed is an understatement; this initiative really seemed to spark the group’s imagination and they rose to the challenge with commitment and professionalism.

It also allowed them to hone a whole set of skills that, while not directly linked to their course, are invaluable to both hospitality and so many other industries.

It is precisely these kinds of transferable and ‘soft’ skills that our region’s economy and businesses need to flourish, so we were delighted, in 2024, to join forces with the college again on a project that took this approach further.

This time we enlisted the help of Art and Design and Hospitality students to create an eye-catching calendar for 2025. The hospitality students once again took on the task of creating recipes and meals using fresh, seasonal produce from the gardens - and then the Art and Design group got busy photographing the dishes on-site and deciding on the look of the calendar.

The result was a striking product, all designed, edited and illustrated by the students, that showcased seasonally-appropriate meals and recipes for each month.

These collaborations have been so rewarding for both parties. From our point of view, we have been able to plug-in to the fresh ideas and enthusiasm of some really nice and driven young people who have committed fully to the challenges we’ve set for them. To see the phenomenal meals and recipes they came up with, along with the stunning shots they captured in the garden and their obvious talent for design, was a delight.

It has also been inspiring to see them take on so many tasks, from practical skill sessions around how to propagate herbs to creating quality business proposals, designs and presentations, with such enthusiasm.

This has been driven both by their commitment to developing their skills for their future careers and their passion for our planet’s future; by understanding, as the chefs and designers of tomorrow, the value of provenance. Because using seasonal, local and organic produce doesn’t just make for tastier and more nutritious meals, it also brings us closer to the ideal of ‘zero carbon miles’ food - all while supporting local growers and farmers.

The college, which is aiming to become a net zero organisation by 2035, has embedded sustainability into all of its courses and hopes, as part of its plans to create a brand-new campus, to soon have a dedicated renewable energy technology centre.

So it makes perfect sense for us to work in tandem.

Sustainability, after all, is in the DNA of gardening itself with photosynthesis, the process through which plants use sunlight to synthesise nutrients, providing one of the finest examples of a waste-free system in action. At gardens around the world, including RHS Harlow Carr, we have the chance - especially through incorporating organic practices and clever water management - to create little oases as examples for others to follow in all walks of life.

We also, through our educational and collaborative work, get a priceless opportunity to help educators like Harrogate College tailor their curriculum to ensure, between us, that the local workforce of tomorrow is an environmentally-conscious as well as a multi-skilled one.

Paul Cook is the curator of RHS Harlow Carr.