Young green-fingered gardeners

Jane Feberij de Jonge, above, joined a panel of judges to check out the rosy picture in Bahrain's schools before the kingdom's horticultural fiesta. UNDER the current patronage of His Majesty King Hamad, the Bahrain Garden Club has for the past 42 years organised a gardening show, one of the nation's most colourful annual events.

This year's display at the Exhibition Centre has been upgraded to international status and it now looks as if the 2008 Riffa Views Bahrain International Garden Show (RVBIGS) in February promises to be a spectacular happening.

This three-day horticulture and agricultural fair will have much to offer both commercial traders and interested private individuals.

For this forthcoming show, I was asked by the Garden Club to join a group of judges visiting Bahrain's government schools to inspect and assess the best kept school gardens for their annual awards.

I was to concentrate on the 'Special Plants and Special Features' sections - and what a revelation that was!

I have now seen a whole different side to life in Bahrain and it was stunning to visit such lovely, healthy gardens blooming on school premises. From Arad to Sanabis, Old Zinj to East Riffa we visited 26 schools with beautiful, vibrant displays of flowers, trees, fruit and vegetables.

I talked to enthusiastic pupils and their friendly members of staff. Everyone was helpful, knowledgeable and wanting to tell us more.

We were led around a host of colourful, well-tended gardens, vegetable patches and green verdant plots located between classroom blocks and playgrounds.

I was given strawberries to taste (delicious), home-grown cucumbers, beetroot and aubergine to take away for my salads, and a huge loofah which was plucked from its tree and which I must dry before it can tenderly rub my husband's back!

We admired compost heaps and discussed the schools' efforts at re-directing air-conditioner and waste water for cultivation purposes. We heard about extra curricular education in the garden and field; how the children learn to propagate seeds; plan, label and design their flower beds and harvest vegetables.

Over the three coldest days that Bahrain has experienced in decades, we were led through our delightful, chilly quest by Nilofer Al Jahromi, the Government School and special needs programme co-ordinator, and board-member of Bahrain Garden Club. With much experience in horticulture and structural design but suffering from a bad attack of flu, Nilofa showed fortitude and unfailing cheerfulness and gave me so much background information.

She outlined how Bahrain's Ministry of Education grants each school BD100 per annum to use for their outside garden areas. As few state schools employ specialised staff, they rely on the time and efforts of enthusiastic volunteers to enlighten pupils on agricultural or gardening matters.

Extra-curricular classes in horticulture and plant cultivation are optional and each individual school principal uses his or her enthusiasm, imagination and organisational ability to promote such activities.

Many schools report growing interest amongst pupils in plant cultivation and I understand that standards have risen considerably in the 10 years the Garden Club has included a school section in their annual show.

This year, almost 30 schools felt able to enter the hotly contended competition.

There were more schools in the 2007 contest, but the judging this year coincided with national school exams which, of course, take precedence.

Some schools were undeniably better prepared than others, exhibiting higher standards in their gardens, but it's good to note a willingness to promote such skills amongst students. One headmaster in Isa Town told me that many pupils' parents and families work on the land or own agricultural plots in Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt. Those boys frequently leave school to enter the agricultural field and they understand the need to be well-prepared for such careers even if the subjects are not officially on their school's curriculum.

All the schools we visited employ staff to maintain and clean outside areas but without exception the boys and girls are themselves involved in planting, trimming and tending an extensive selection of native and traditional or imported seedlings and plants, shrubs, flowers and vegetables.

As well as the flower beds with petunias and geraniums and the vegetable patches with carrots and parsley, I saw traditional rose bushes and lots of varying cacti.

There were decorative ornamental cabbages, sweet chilli, bamboo, maize with ears of corn, fig and almond trees - and of course the loofah tree.

Two different schools had pomegranate and banana trees both heaving with healthy-looking fruit. Shaikh Isa bin Ali Secondary Boys School grows 12 different medicinal and essence plants and A'Ali Intermediate showed us their organic compost heap.

West Riffa Secondary Girls grows tomatoes through volcanic chips imported from Jordan, whilst Al Zallaq Girls had three different gardens areas: one each for flowers, fruit and vegetables.

In Budaiya, there was a school with gardens in a local rural setting, the paths laid with crushed sea shells for good drainage and safety.

Somewhere in Sanabis, I noted an excellent selection of native plants and salt tolerant vegetation, plus the most beautiful painted murals, gushing fountains and decorative archways.

In all the schools we visited I only saw one example of graffiti, and that was at a girls' school in Riffa! The boys of Jidhafs and Sanabis are perhaps less destructive than we sometimes believe.

All in all, it was a fascinating journey around some of Bahrain's government schools. Meeting so many interesting, skilled people was a treat.

And the winner is? Well I actually don't know, we were a group of five judges and the Garden Club's show committee will now evaluate our findings. You have to visit Riffa Views Bahrain International Garden Show, 22nd -_24th February, to hear the good news.