Amanda Harkness’s preschoolers did not understand the link between vegetables and gardens.

The Kaleidoscope students thought all their food came from container ships, and were surprised to learn it could be grown in their backyard.

“Children today are completely disconnected from where their food comes from,” the 37-year-old said.

It is one of the reasons Mrs Harkness started the seed-to-table programme at the Devonshire art school five years ago. Seventy children are taking part this year. It introduces them to gardening and encourages them to eat their vegetables.

Twelve years ago, Mrs Harkness was not so keen on vegetables herself. Her favourite foods were bread and pasta; she loved making gingerbread pancakes.

Then she discovered she had coeliac disease.

“I lost 8lb when I was first diagnosed,” she said. “I was so scared to eat anything.”

Everything she picked up in the grocery store seemed to contain gluten, a substance she cannot eat without getting sick.

“It was disheartening,” she said. “I’ve always loved cooking and feeding people. It felt like there was nothing I could eat.”

Through trial and error and help from a chef, she learnt to cook gluten-free meals. She has also incorporated more fresh fruits and vegetables into her diet.

“I realised that fresher is always better,” she said. “The fewer ingredients there were in the food, the less likely it was to bother me.”

She uses some of her gluten-free recipes in her seed-to-table classes. This week students made no-bake pumpkin pies with ingredients from the Kaleidoscope garden.

Mrs Harkness said it had been a real joy to see children taste vegetables for the first time.

“A lot of children are fussy or only want to eat what they want to eat — I have an eight-year-old son, so I know. But when they see the other children eating a tomato or a carrot, suddenly they are like, ‘can I try that?’. Peer pressure wins.”

Some of the children have a garden at home but it is usually maintained by grandparents.

“You don’t hear a lot of them talking about their parents gardening,” Mrs Harkness said. “Maybe the next generation of farmers will come out of this programme.

“I always wanted a garden but I live in a condo development without much land. All I could manage was container gardening. This has been a real learning experience for me.”

Her biggest challenge has been pests — feral chickens and rats.

“We don’t use pesticides because children are working in the garden,” she said. “We have to plant a third more seeds to stop the feral chickens from completely wiping us out. We planted cantaloupes and the rats ate everything but one cantaloupe.”

Today she credits coeliac disease with helping her to “eat healthier” and is hoping her programme will do the same for her students.