Our earthly donation to local primary school a turnip for the books

Freshly grown vegetables are the dish of the day at a local Bedfordshire primary school after we donated 12 tonnes of topsoil to help renovate a disused raised planter into an un-beet-rootable veggie patch fit for all kinds of homegrown produce.

Roxton Church of England Academy, in Bedfordshire, has been developing a forest school to help pupils learn where food comes from, the wider world and environment, how they can help the planet as well as valuable life skills in providing for themselves.

But when staff toiled to find the soil needed for their previously unloved raised planter, staff from the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvements stepped in to offer a helping hand.

Paul Salmon, Senior Stakeholder Lead, from the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvements, said: “Our ambitions when building the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvements is to leave a positive legacy. We want to bring the local community on our construction journey, so when Roxton CofE Academy reached out to see if we could help fill a disused raised planter, we didn’t hesitate in whirling the heavy-duty machines into action.”

Supported by our supply chain partners – Skanska, G. Webb and Lynch - we trucked in 12 tonnes of topsoil to fill the raised bed. Ten volunteers from the scheme were on hand to assist in the project, giving the forest area the ‘Ground Force’ treatment.

“Although we aren’t Alan Titchmarsh or Charlie Dimmock, this was a real team effort working closely with our supply chain partners to supply the materials and neighbouring landowners allowing us access to deliver them. We helped create an area for the young pupils to grow their own vegetables so they could build on wellbeing, exploration, discovery, and social skills that forest schools aim to nurture.”

Roxton CofE Academy, said: "We want to extend a big thank you to National Highways for helping us to develop our forest school and growing area. By filling in our raised bed we will be able to progress with projects including helping our children learn where our food comes from, the wider world and environment, how they can help our planet as well as valuable life skills in providing for themselves. We could never have afforded with such tight budgets, to provide this ourselves to such a high standard. Our outside learning and forest school area has gained a wonderful resource, and we can’t thank them enough.”

We are currently putting plans in place for the start of main construction on the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvements. The scheme will help transform the region, improving journeys between Milton Keynes, Bedford, St Neots, and Cambridge. 

National Highways plans will see the creation of a new 10-mile dual carriageway linking the A1 Black Cat roundabout in Bedfordshire to the A428 Caxton Gibbet roundabout in Cambridgeshire. Both existing roundabouts will be upgraded into modern, free-flowing junctions with a new junction added at Cambridge Road, improving access to St Neots and its train station.

The improvements will help drivers save up to an hour-and-a-half on their journeys every week

The scheme is expected to open to traffic in 2027.