Clydebank has a proud history of being an industrial town. It is famous for being home to many shipyards and the Singer factory too. Many of the world’s greatest ocean-going ships were built in Clydebank such as the RMS Lusitania, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and the QE2.

One of the few existing signs of the town’s industrial past remains: the Titan Crane.  Our garden has a replica model of the crane forming the centrepoint of our garden. We adapted the original design to build it from reclaimed timber donated by one of our staff members. The children worked with members of staff to design and build the crane.

To acknowledge KSB's silver anniversary element of the brief, we sent P1 to B&Q with a small budget and they brought us  back three ‘Silver Dust’ Sencio!

Our plants were chosen with wildlife in mind. The pupils researched which plants were pollinator friendly and chose to grow sunflowers and cosmos as the main flowering plants to compliment the lavender and dianthus which are popular with pollinators.

Old plant pots were painted and decorated to represent the houses in Clydebank.

One of the favourite parts was constructing the crane and getting to use the drill and power tools! Understanding the importance of ‘measure twice to cut once’ is something useful which we all learned!

The most challenging part was adapting the original design when it became apparent that plant pots were not going to be strong enough to create the crane and that an alternative idea was needed. The children spoke to staff at an assembly and asked for any ideas and help.  As a result other staff volunteered materials and their handy skills!

Our school janitor donated solar powered lights as the real Titan Crane is illuminated at night.

We reached out to one of the mentors, Wendy, from the list given to us from KSB and she has been a huge help. She brought us some strawberry seedlings in March which we have been watering and potting on and she also was kind enough to bring a mass of seeds!

We planted pumpkins, French beans, peas, cosmos, sweet peas, nasturtium, radish and sunflowers with Wendy and many of these seedlings grew so well thanks to the good weather that we held a plant sale to raise funds for our Eco fund! Some plants were put aside, and we planted beans, cosmos and a sunflower in our garden. She was a fantastic help and support to us!