Our garden represents Dalkeith's agricultural and industrial heritage and how the two were intertwined.  In the past Dalkeith was a mining town. There are mining carts with poached egg plant inside that represents the coal nicknamed as ‘black gold’. On the sides of the mine cart track you can also see yellow calendula flowers and a sunflower which also represent the coal.

There are chives with purple flowers which link to the Scottish national flower a thistle.

There are willow structures in our garden including a viaduct bridge and a mining wheel which can be found close to the town of Dalkeith.

There are plenty of flowers in our garden to support bees and butterflies and plants that we can eat including beans, chives, strawberries, peas, lettuce, beetroot and cress.

The children have learned how to care for plants and about the life cycle of the plants. They have documented the progress of the plants and developed their literacy skills. “I have learned how to grow flowers and about the olden days”. 

The children faced challenges throughout this journey which we discussed together. They said “Scooping in the soil as we had a lot of soil to put in but not big shovels and it was heavy” so we worked as a team by scooping soil together to overcome this challenge. “Putting in the plants properly so we don’t break them” therefore the children listened to the instructions and followed them.

Whilst creating our pocket garden we had help from a local mentor Jenny Mollison who donated us some plants. Some of the families within the school also donated resources and plants.

The children had many favorite parts of creating the pocket garden including, “strawberries”, “the big plant”, “I liked putting the soil in”, “I like tasting the chives”, “I liked planting the beetroot”, “I liked seeing the change” and “I liked visiting my sister in primary 1”.

After the completion has finished we plan on caring for our plants and eventually harvesting them. We plan to follow recipes from the past to further develop the learning gained from exploring our local heritage.