School telling us to remove nut trees from community orchard

[Calling]

We are in a local voluntary group and local people planted an orchard in the grounds of a school, for the school.

Now, the school has written to say that we have to remove the nut trees because one pupil has a bad nut allergy.

There are fruit and nut trees, that the local people planted some years ago and we have put a lot of work into weeding and watering. The yield was actually for the kids and we are volunteering with the school with and nature sessions outside.

Before anyone says we are potential child killers, we do understand the importance of safety. There is a management plan in place, but the school has been asked by a parent to remove our trees.
I do feel disheartened - nobody in the school said no to nut trees originally.

The children can bring nuts from any nut tree. They are so common around.

A child could throw a nut from that tree (like when the boy threw a piece of cheese at Karanbir Cheema) . A child's life is more important than a tree

The trees are mostly filberts and hazel nuts, with a beautiful almond tree.

I hasten to add that if my dc had serious allergies I would be like a raging tiger trying to protect them!

But as someone more objective, I am able to step back and wonder what is really in the broader interests of the child. As a society we seem to be on a mission to annihilate all forms of risk, of possible offence etc and you have to start to wonder where it all stops, and where people have to develop their own abilities to navigate some of these things.

But the nut is in a very hard nut shell.

I love walnut trees.

We had many when I was a child, they always had the best shade and the nuts were lovely and sweet when not quite ripe.

Spent many a happy hour cracking them and then getting told off for having mucky hands.

I am making a guess they are hazelnuts/cobnuts - almonds are only recently possible to grow in auk and Walnuts take ages to get to having nuts.

You might remind them that hazels make up a good percentage of any UK natural hedge….

it might also be useful to remind them that nuts are only on the trees for a short amount of time. They may not even be falling or ripe during term time? Hazels should be ripe around now, so no reason someone could benefit from the need to harvest all the nuts before term starts.

theres just no way they could cause harm any other time.

the risk is negligible, and compared to other ways they child could encounter allergens it must be insignificant.

Is this actually a risk or just the school panicking? I suggest you get advice from an allergy group, and possibly see if the parent involved can have a chat with you. They may not be concerned at all.

I live on an estate with loads of nut trees - we have the following within 30 yards of the house.
Hazelnut, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut, beech, acorn...

Obviously all allergies are different, but I know a number of people with severe nut allergies that have no problems living here. None of them have ever struggled to come to our house, walking past those trees.

Now it might be that a particular child has an allergy that would be effected by the trees, in which case I can see that it is a really difficult one to manage with the trees there. However my suspicion would be that someone at school has put 2 and 2 together and made 638. ie we have a child with a nut allergy + we have nut trees = panic that the child will react to all parts of the trees and die!!!

Well, aside from whoever wrote you the letter that is 😂

Sorry to be a Sensible (I run a green space group next to a school) but it's really not your decision or responsibility to decide on whether that tree is there or not. The school trust owns the land, the school trust makes the decision and they remove it if needed.

The Trust sound like arseholes though and I would probably be looking at another space to volunteer my precious time and care on if I were you.

My youngest is now in sixth form and the children have been to for everything packed lunch of any snacks to be nut free. I’m surprised this was allowed in the school grounds at…

It'll probably be to stop other kids doing something reckless and triggering a reaction on the child with a severe allergy.

Families and kids with allergies are usually monumentally careful and anxious, even from a young age. It's other people who are the problem.

Excellent point. When my DD was at primary (small village) they banned nuts for safety, despite acknowledging there were no children with nut allergies who attended. At the same time they refused to make classroom accommodations for DDs milk allergy.

Q: I have to say a community garden being asked to remove a nut tree sounds like madness. Equally how involved are the school? How many nut allergy children? How mature is the tree? Could you create a nut tree section slightly fenced off - so no nut allergy enter zone?

A: The school is involved because we volunteers run nature sessions with the kids including a fun one about insects, worms and ladybirds that the kids liked.

One nut allergy kid. One.

The 8 trees are about 5 years old - so could possibly survive being up-rooted, but I don't know.

The school doesn't want a nut tree sectioned off zone.

I am so disheartened - we worked so hard.

🙄.. Yes, same with kniives. Children can bring knives from anywhere too and they are so common around. But the school has a duty to safeguard children. just because childrek can bring them in doesnt mean they should be allowed. This thread shows just how unempathetic and selfish people are. I hope none of you or your children develop allergies. This thread is depressing, I am going to unwatch and leave this thread

Even if the child is kept away from the trees, another child could pick up a nut and bring into the isolation zone. Schools simply don’t have enough staff to adequately supervise.

Then you add the issue of isolating and stigmatizing students with medical conditions.

I suspect it would be a bit late by the time you notice a child has discoloured fingers if the allergen is severe.

Nut shells can still have nut proteins on them. The nuts don't just sit on the floor then disappear, they get kicked about, rot, opened up by wildlife meaning the nuts are out and getting mixed in with/on other shells.

I am tempted to say that the parents who said that the trees must go, can do some of the hard work of digging them up, moving them watering them and so on.
But of course they would not.

Where is the line drawn though? Can the child not go on any school trip, or not go to the countryside. There are hazels in every hedgerow.

I think I would want a consultants letter stating which nut trees are a problem and which aren't before doing anything tbh.

I also would have thought the local squirrels would have sorted out the nut problem very quickly too, don't you have any?

You can absolutely have a reaction to the shells. I have a nut allergy and touched an uncracked nut in a fruit bowl at my friend's house, then touched my eye which swelled up dramatically. However, nut trees exist in nature so they'd be far better teaching all children how to identify them so they can avoid them if necessary.

No one is selfish. But you cannot make a situation revolve around one child. The child has an épi pen, the staff are trained. That's enough.

UK has always been weird with nuts. My children went to school abroad for a few years.
No bans at school. It would be discussed how to managed allergies if needed. Not as an upfront rule.

Has any school banned all dairy products in case cheese is thrown?

One person is often used as the reason those of us with allergies should simply be excluded. It is a disgusting attitude.