Every New Vision Trust school now has a small, self-contained hydroponic garden running quietly in the corner of a classroom. It grows lettuce, herbs, and salads — without soil — and it's the entry point into a Trust-wide programme with a three-tier roadmap, currently piloting Tier 2 at Elmhurst.
Your Mini Manual Unit is a self-contained 8-pod hydroponic garden, roughly the size of a small bread maker. It sits on a desk, a windowsill, or a quiet corner of the classroom and grows leafy greens year-round.
It's mains-powered for now — quiet, safe, low-voltage — with its own LED grow light and a built-in water pump that circulates nutrients past the plant roots. Pupils take readings by hand and submit them through the dashboard.
Your Mini Manual Unit is the foundation of the Trust's three-tier roadmap. A strong Tier 1 rhythm — regular readings, engaged pupils, lessons that use the dashboard — is what makes the case to funders for what comes next.
Download, print, share. The toolkit and pupil logbook are designed to live on a clipboard next to your unit.
A 4-litre tabletop garden, properly used, becomes one of the most cross-curricular pieces of equipment in the school.
Photosynthesis becomes visible. Pupils measure pH and watch how it shifts as plants drink. They see hydroponic nutrient cycles, transpiration, and the role of light wavelength in plant growth — concepts that often live only on textbook pages.
Real numbers, taken weekly, plotted on a real dashboard. Pupils calculate averages, spot trends, predict next week's reading, and learn what 'an outlier' actually feels like.
Food miles drop to zero when the lettuce grows in the classroom. Pupils explore urban agriculture, the circular economy, and what climate action looks like at school scale — the language of the Trust's Climate Action Plan, made tangible.
Pupils take ownership. They become Climate Champions, responsible for their unit's wellbeing. Harvest day becomes a school event. Visiting parents and inspectors see sustainability in action, not on a poster.
The dashboard is a real data system. Older pupils can explore how readings are submitted, stored, and rendered as charts — a gentle introduction to APIs, JSON, and the idea that data anywhere on the internet started as someone, somewhere, taking a measurement.
Pupils see a working appliance from the inside: pumps, sensors, lighting, control panels. They learn how engineered systems sustain biological systems — and start to imagine the next iteration.
Pupils ask. Teachers ask. Parents ask. Here's the honest picture — what AI is doing in this programme today, what's planned, and what the wider world is doing with AI in farming.
This dashboard, the toolkit, and the glossary you're reading were built with help from an AI assistant — used by humans, to make better tools faster. The AI isn't watching your plants or making decisions about your unit. It helped us shape the words on these pages.
The Tier 2 Mobile Unit at Elmhurst will eventually have an AI chat panel — a feature that translates live sensor numbers into plain English. Pupils will be able to ask "what's happening with the water today?" and get an answer they can understand. No timeline yet; it'll arrive when it's ready.
In commercial agriculture, AI is starting to predict crop yields, spot plant disease from photos, and tune nutrient mixes automatically. It's a real and growing field. Your school's unit is small — but the science behind it is the same science the big AI farming systems are working with.
Whether you're a teacher logging this week's readings, a parent peeking at your school's dashboard, or a head considering Tier 2, the door is open. Your weekly readings are what bring the dashboard to life — and make the case for the programme to grow.