In the vein of the cult television show The Good Life, a school has decided to get back to basics and grow its own produce.

And just like Tom and Barbara from the hit 70s show, pupils at Cowplain Community School will be making the most of the greens and cooking them into all sorts of hearty meals like casseroles and pies.

The vegetables grown will be used in home economics lessons and science lessons, as well as feeding the supplies of the school's kitchen.

Already in the offing are spuds, lettuces, marrow, onions and carrots.

The school is also growing its own fresh herbs like basil and parsley to make their organic vegetables taste even nicer.

Yvonne Barber, assistant headteacher, said: 'We are going right back to basics with them.

'We will be looking at soil types, what vegetables grow best where.

'We want them to grow the vegetables from seed and then cultivate them until they are fully-grown.'

The initiative came about after the school received a £1,000 grant from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust to set up its own vegetable patch.

The school was a perfect choice as it is a business and enterprise school and encourages children to use their own initiative to achieve the goals.

The school also has 'healthy' status and encourages healthy eating at lunchtimes.

Pupils got the bug for horticulture after growing their own wildlife garden, which recently won an award from Purbrook Horticultural Society.

In addition to the vegetable patch, the school plans to renovate an old greenhouse and grow tomatoes and cucumber in it.

The project will be completely sustainable as all the all food scraps from the kitchen will be piled up and turned into compost.

Unlike The Good Life, however, the school won't be able to accommodate chickens or pigs just yet.

But Mrs Barber said: 'There's nothing like tasting freshly-grown vegetables.

'It will teach children what freshly grown food tastes like and that it is not always the same as what you buy in the supermarkets.'

jeff.travis@thenews.co.uk