Yesterday we were at Drymen primary School as part of a parents task force to sort out the beds in the playground.When the school was built flower beds were incorporated into the playground. Unfortunately they were filled with concrete and rubble under a thin layer of soil (Why do they do this?????). They were also flush with the tarmac surface - encouraging children to run straight over them in pursuit of a ball.
As places for the children to grow anything they
were a disaster - puddles lay on the surface in the rain, and they baked solid in the sun. Apart from 
daffodils and weeds nothing ever grew.Last year's planting efforts were even more dismal than usual as someone came along with a spade and stole most of the plants. The CCTV which was installed after other vandalism will hopefully stop this happening again.
The children at the school are all keen on the idea of planting things and particularly in making their playground a haven for wildlife. It has been a shame that their efforts have been doomed to failure, through no fault of their own.
So over the Easter holidays a group of parents got busy, Colin Campbell created wooden raised beds from wood supplied by Gilmour and Aitken timber yard, and yesterday we had a grand weeding session, finally filling up the new raised beds with very fine top soil.
One of the beds was planted up with salvaged plants with some additions from here. Hopefully the children will have lots of ideas as to what they would like to see in the other 4.
3 comments:
How lovely to see children taking an interest in growing things. I think that it is so important to start them gardening from a young age, and to take pride in what they grow, whether it is one sunflower, or a whole vegetable patch. Nice to see that you are sharing all that wonderful plant growing knowledge.
I couldn't agree more - you need to get them hooked before it all becomes "uncool".
They are all going to be planting sunflowers this week - probably at home - for a height competition - then the idea is that the flower heads get dried for the birds and the stems cut up to make ladybird homes etc for the winter.
It will make such a difference to their enthusiasm if weeding isn't such a big issue and if their efforts actually grow.
The school is part of the Green Flag system where they consider lots of ecological issues - from turning lightbulbs off to creating wildlife habitats.
There is a pupil eco board (I am a co-opted local business member) which co-ordinates and records all the projects.
what a nice idea, I hope they get some nice results!
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