Rephad Primary
Rephad Primary
Rephad’s pocket garden represents our heritage through several strands.
We have Curling, and the local ice rink at Northwest Castle that has turned out many an Olympic champion. We are also giving a nod to the wonderful native oyster bed we are lucky to have in Loch Ryan, near the school. Our town’s football club Stranraer FC is the third oldest football club in Scotland.
Coppicing is a traditional woodland management technique still used today. It involves cutting trees at the base, to allow new shoots to grow. Weaving is an ancient skill and craft, that is still in use to make baskets or fabrics. We used coppiced Hazel for the stakes, and willow woven through to make the boundary of the garden.
It became very clear that the absolute favourite part of making this garden for the children was any task that involved doing painting! Whether it was painting the pallet green to represent the football pitch, or painting on the white lines, it was the favourite task this year! Closely followed by watering!
We used Senecio Candidans ‘Angels wings’ to represent the silver thread for the 25th Anniversary of Keep Scotland Beautiful. This plant proved to be very popular with all the children, and it received much stroking of its leaves! It’s colour also tied in nicely with the ‘ice’ on the curling rink.
We contacted local curling legend Gail Munro to ask if she could lend us a curling stone for our pocket garden. She was more than happy to do so.
Our garden is organic, peat-free and full of flowers to attract the pollinators such as, honeysuckle, sweet peas, nasturtium, chives (for the flowers), sunflowers, busy lizzies, strawberries, cornflowers, allysum, leucanthemum and lobelia. A pure feast for the beasties!
The edible parts of our garden include, strawberries, chives, rainbow chard, red orache, salad, nasturtium, red onion and sunflower seeds.
We will continue to look after our garden, harvest the produce and water it when required. We like to leave the seed heads standing for the birds to feast on, or for self seeding. The sweet peas will be picked by the children and taken home.
