Thurso High School Enhanced Provision

The seedlings all need water

We grew lots of seedlings

We set up the structure for our garden

Bringing the plants together

Filling the garden with plants

Potatoes, chives and beans

🌿What was your favourite part of creating your garden?

We all really enjoyed researching what we could grow in our garden. Putting the plans together and making sure we were using different plants we could eat was great fun. Everyone worked together to plant all the vegetables, herbs and flowers together. We all looked after our plants in the green house and made sure it was all watered properly. We loved making our bird bath and put some grass and twigs in for the birds to take to build their nests. We can't wait to see all the bees!

🌿Did you face any challenges and how did you respond to them?

We grew lots and lots of different things for our pocket garden. Sadly we didn't manage to get the thistles or the spring onions to grow. We chose instead to try to grow Swiss Chard and Collard to give everyone more to eat and thankfully they did work. We found growing flowers difficult so changed to Sunflowers and Pumpkins because they have very bright flowers and the bees can pollinate them so we can have pumpkins for Halloween. These are both looking good in our garden.

🌿What did you learn whilst creating your garden?

That there is some flowers you can eat! You can use the lavender we grew in recipes. You can pick chives and eat them! We learned that there are all kinds of different bees that help our plants grow. The best part was learning about the plants that you can pick and eat straight away. We can share these with everyone who visits our garden.

🌿Did you have any links with your local community or a Pocket Garden mentor whilst creating your garden?

We visited the Castle of Mey in April and Chris the Head Gardener gave us great tips for growing our potatoes. They look like we are going to get a fantastic harvest this year with his help. We received lots of second hand pots and trays from the Wick Gardening Club with local businesses donating pallets to us.

🌿What will happen to your garden after the competition has finished?

Our garden is available to munch on by everyone who visits our department. We will use everything we grow in our cookery classes. Anything we have that is extra will be donated to our Home Economics department or to our local food bank. We are going to keep our garden in place and use it all year round growing plants for the different seasons. We have a harvest of vegetables and herbs to look forward to.

🌿Is there anything else you would like to share?

We have a small class of 10 in our Enhanced Provision. Everyone has different needs and everyone took part, from creating a plan, to planting seeds, moving the pallets, to painting our milk cartons. We did not buy anything for our garden, we used all our pots and trays from previous years and recycled bottles, we used old plates in our birdbath and bee drinking station.