Bonnie Wee Nook
🌿What was your favourite part of creating your garden?
We loved sharing and discussing our ideas to make our Bonnie Wee Nook as we got to work as a fabulous team demonstrating our school values! Making our video was also a highlight. We really enjoyed collecting all the recyclable material to create our garden, .ie woodchips and recycled pallets from our teachers farm. This is because we were able to give items and resources of nature another purpose without buying a thing! We also loved being able to express our creativity while building and watch each day our Scottish garden bloom and thrive.
🌿Did you face any challenges and how did you respond to them?
Yes, we did! We originally were going to create a dam but after careful reflection we felt as a class this wasn't the vision we wanted to best express Scotland. Instead we focused on the flow of Scottish water through rainfall and waterfalls! We incorporated this into our final design and used umbrellas as water catchers and sun traps for our garden. We also had the challenge of keeping our garden safe from footballs during afterschool clubs so we created posters to remind pupils to respect the garden space and educate others on boundaries.
🌿What did you learn whilst creating your garden?
We learned so much! We learned that it takes a lot of dedication and love to nurture a pocket garden. Throughout our growing journey we were able to embed our META skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity and so much more. We learned about native Scottish plants and flowers such as coriander, carrots and bluebells and what they can be used for in Scottish dishes or benefits for wildlife. For example bluebells are great for attracting bees and butterflies which we now have flying around in our garden!
🌿Did you have any links with your local community or a Pocket Garden mentor whilst creating your garden?
Yes! The first thing we did was reach out to all available mentors. We found this so insightful as the mentors were able to educate us on the best planting methods and places to reach out for recyclable material. For example we were given some guidance from the resource 'Meadow-in-a-box', on how best to support a dry wildflower meadow and this led to us sourcing seeds such as Cornflower, corn poppy and corn marigold! By communicating with mentors we were able to strengthen our planning/designing, while also learning more about growing a garden.
🌿What will happen to your garden after the competition has finished?
Our garden will continue to be nourished and cared for as it continues to grow. Soon we will be harvesting our carrots, cauliflower, broad beans, peas, turnips and coriander etc. We will turn these into Scottish dishes. During Summer holidays our teacher, Miss Pringle, will take our plants home to her greenhouse at her farm where she will look after them before they return back to school in August! Our garden will then be replanted to support winter/autumn growth such as onions, leeks and brussel sprouts ready for Christmas!
🌿Is there anything else you would like to share?
We hope you enjoyed watching our showcase video as we wanted to explain our journey using our own voices! We hope this can be shared with other Eco schools. We also wanted to share that our pocket garden has been attracting Scottish wildlife such as, butterflies, bees, caterpillars, worms in our soil and even bird drinking from our watering cans/umbrellas. We also want to say a big thank you for giving us this opportunity to learn outdoors while also having sooo much fun!
🌿Entrant Video
🌿Garden design
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