Veg Power launches its 2025 ‘Growing to Love’ campaign

Veg Power, the not-for-profit alliance increasing the UK’s vegetable consumption, launched its 2025 ‘Growing to Love’ campaign and is on track to reach 30,000 children from across the UK. ‘Growing to Love’ is a tomato growing project that supports children’s learning about food, its origins and growth, while also encouraging vegetable acceptance. This year’s campaign has been supported by a range of experts including TV and radio presenter, Sam Nixon and former Blue Peter Gardener, Chris Collins.

The project will reach 30,000 KS1 and KS2 children from 479 primary schools across the UK. #GrowingtoLove encourages children to take responsibility for their own tomato plants, fostering a sense of ownership and enjoyment throughout the process. Pupils plant the tomato seeds at school before the summer holidays, then bring their seedlings home to care for them over the holiday. The tomatoes will be ready to harvest and eat when they return to school after the summer break in September or October.

Each participating school receives a ‘Growing to Love’ pack containing all the necessary growing materials including windowsill propagation kits, seeds, organic vegetable feed, compost and plant labels. The packs were developed in collaboration with the growing resource expertise of Westland, the campaign’s fulfilment partner and a team of experts including nutritionists, behavioural psychologists and educators who support Veg Power as part of its multi-disciplinary, cross-sector alliance.

Growing to love…

Participating schools are provided with a ‘Growing to Love’ pack that includes a range of resources to support teachers and students, including a ‘practical guide to growing’ handbook, instructional videos, and lesson plans for each year group. The tomato plant is used to create learning opportunities around topics such as photosynthesis and germination. The project also features an informative and interactive website for teachers, parents, carers, and children at growingtolove.com

Veg Powers Mission

Veg Power is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company on a mission to turn around vegetable consumption in the UK. Over 80% of our children are not eating enough vegetables, with a third eating less than one portion a day. Veg Power runs creative initiatives to engage, inspire and motivate people to eat more veg and create life-long good food habits.

In addition to the Growing to Love campaign, Veg Power also runs:

Eat Them to Defeat Them, a multi award-winning campaign to change children’s perceptions of veg
#SeasonalVeg social media influencer campaigns to increase consumption of British vegetables
the Simply Veg campaign to provide parents/carers with simple advice and ideas to increase vegetable consumption while helping to reduce the impact on families’ budgets and decrease the amount of food waste.

CEO Dan, Senior lecturer Clare and a teacher from last year shared there thoughts:

Commenting on the Growing to Love project, Dr Clare Holley, Senior Lecturer in Psychology who specializes in children’s behaviour said ,“Research has shown that growing projects such as Growing to Love can benefit children’s eating habits. They encourage reluctant children to give vegetables a try and may lead to some children eating larger numbers of them.”

Dan Parker, CEO of Veg Power, said, “We have seen first hand from the schools that have participated in this growing project, how much fun and enthusiasm it creates. We need to reach children in more creative and engaging ways to help them understand the benefits and improve dietary health. Growing to Love is just one of our campaigns that is having an impact on children’s vegetable acceptance and we can’t wait to hear from participating schools about this year’s campaign.”

‘Growing to Love’ follows the successful nationwide 2024 campaign which reached 21,000 children from 375 primary schools across the UK. Evaluation of the project found that 98% of teachers surveyed wanted to repeat Growing to Love. The teachers not only thought their pupils found the experience fun but that it was also easy to implement.

Teachers involved in the campaign last year commented, “I love this programme as its so easy to do and everything is supplied for the children to use. It’s a great idea to get children learning how things grow.”