Our garden is a representation of traditional Scottish food as part of our heritage. 

We painted the backdrop in tartan as this is often found on food packaging of Scottish foods. We chose an Irn Bru tartan! We planted a mixture of orange and blue flowers to tie in with this tartan: Marigolds for orange; Cornflowers, Lobelia and Nigella because their flowers are blue. All these flowers are great for attracting bees,  butterflies and hoverflies. 

We reused an old teapot and teacup to represent the very popular Scottish tradition of a wee cuppa tea. Lemon balm was planted in the teapot. It can be used to make tea. Visitors in Scotland are usually offered a cuppa accompanied by a sweet treat. We reused Tunnock’s teacake wrappers wrapped around stones.  We also put shortbread steps leading up to the teapot made from old bits of wood.

The traditional Scottish dish of haggis, neeps and tatties is represented by Marigolds (orange for the neeps), Diascia (white for the mashed tatties) and we also created a pile of bark ( brown for the haggis). The bark pile is a good habitat for invertebrates and we watched beetles use it almost immediately.

Fishing has been a vital part of Scottish life for centuries so we planted Nemesia and Salmon Petunias to represent salmon fishing. We reused an old lobster creel from a local disused harbour to grow radishes. The radish colour represents prawns, lobsters and crabs that used to be the catch inside.

There are real neeps planted beside the haggis, neeps and tatties dish. We have planted Oat grass as well. Oats are commonly used in Scottish foods such as oatcakes, porridge and actually often in haggis too.

The P7 pupils thoroughly enjoyed the design process and had a lot of fun imagining what we could put in our garden. Fishing was a firm favourite with some of the boys! Everyone insisted we have Irn Bru as a main theme!

They really liked taking their learning outdoors and enjoyed this way of working.

The main challenge was to have plants flowering in time for the deadline. Our design relies quite a lot on the colours of the flowers we have chosen. We think our garden will look even better in a week or two when the flowers will be out in full bloom.  We plan to harvest the edible products that are ready before the school summer holidays. 

The children learned a lot during their research of traditional Scottish foods. Then they learned to plant seeds and transplant the seedlings into larger containers to allow the roots to spread. They learned that the plants had to be turned regularly as they kept growing towards the light.  It was great for them to see the huge network of roots that were created when they transferred plants from pots into the pocket garden area.

We were very lucky during the process as a lot of resources were donated from the community. Dalbeattie Garden Centre and Castle Douglas Aldi donated compost for our garden.