Horticulture students’ festive challenge raises over £1000 for charity

Students on our FdSc Horticulture degree have raised over £1000 for charity with a Christmas wreath sale, learning essential employability skills along the way.

The project is part of the Employability module, which takes place in year two of the course. The purpose is to give students the opportunity to develop skills that employers really need and give the students an entrepreneurial mind-set.

Named “Profit from a Pony”, the goal is for students to make as much net profit from an initial capital investment. The group is split into two teams and each student has £25 worth of resources that contributes to the team, such as wreath rings, ribbon, dried fruit etc. All plant material is sourced sensitively from the Brackenhurst Campus.

They are then trained by one of our horticulture technicians to make a range of wreaths, which they sell to staff and students, doing their own marketing via posters, social media and in person.

All the profit from the sale will be donated to the Flowerpod, part of Reach Learning Disability- a charity who provide day-care and domiciliary support for people with learning disabilities.

Dave Jukes, Senior Lecturer in Horticulture said: “This module aims to uncover skills such as planning, teamwork, project management, entrepreneurship and resilience among many others.

“It is a challenging exercise as the students have had to learn new skills, build a functioning team and deliver to a good standard on a set date- just like the real world!”