Allanton Primary School

The Living Garden, hosted by the Garden for Life Forum promotes wildlife friendly gardening. Schools were invited to design a small garden including celebrating the 2017 year of History, Heritage and Archaeology. Allanton pupils’ design included a mining bogey planted with lavender running past a wind turbine shaped bird feeder - tying together their industrial heritage and future.

Pupils had had lots of fun planting seeds and watching them grow. They were a bit disappointed that none of their lavender seeds grew so decided to buy a couple of plants to put in the bogey. Cornflower, grass and mixed salad leaves grew very well along with about half of their herb seeds.

Pupils had help from Tom, a volunteer, to build the mining bogey. They used wheels from an old trolley and wood that was left over from making planters. The wind turbine is made up of left over pipe and fittings for drains.

They were not able to find seed for Honeysuckle and Red Campion so bought plants and small plugs to plant out and grow on. Pupils also received a donation of a young Rowan tree from someone’s garden. It needed a new home so was added to the garden. It grew from seed which was most likely deposited by birds as there are Rowan trees nearby.

Growing plants from seed

The mining bogey

Mini plastic bottles greenhouses