Our garden is full of hidden magic and surprises.  See if you can spot references to Alloa’s cultural, built, industrial and natural heritage among the plants.  Our garden is built across 3 whisky barrels donated by a local cooper and a brick from the old brickworks takes pride of place at the front, next to some gnawed branches from our neighbourhood beavers.

Our fairytale beavers are made from wool – a nod to Paton’s mill which produced yarn in Alloa for many years.  Our favourite part of creating our garden was learning about how the reintroduction of beavers has begun to change our local landscape.

Tod Lowrie, in his red cap, is a helpful brownie and has made a lovely big bowl of porridge for granny – although in our garden the porridge is still growing as oats, given to us by our friendly local farmer.  The River Forth, which runs through our fairytale garden, is full of coloured glass, representing Alloa’s long history of glassmaking.

Tiny coal wagons remind us that Alloa used to be a mining community.  In our garden, the town hall is a bug house, which seems fitting as The Beatles’ very first concert was at Alloa Town Hall in 1960. 

There are  lots of tasty things to eat like thyme, raspberries and gooseberries, in case the fairies get peckish after all their hard work.

Towards the rear of our garden, the plant pot Alloa Tower provides a stronghold for bees to rest safely and some beautiful carnations if they fancy a snack.

The magic will continue as the seasons change, as the fairies are going to stay in our garden to help us to harvest our crops as they ripen. We want to use the food we grow to cook something tasty, like Tod Lowrie did for granny in our story.  During the school day our garden welcomes lots of human visitors who love to use it as part of their learning and it will be open to the community at our school fair later this month so everyone can experience the magic!