Ullapool 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.  The Vikings are coming!  A Viking long-ship rowed by radish and beetroot is in full sail in this design through a Scottish wildflower meadow towards Maeshowe ancient burial mound.

Dragon's den

Here there be dragons!

Viking runes

Every garden tells a story about the people who helped make it, the challenges faced, solutions found, lessons learned and the unexpected pleasures along the way. Here is St Joseph’s Primary School’s Pocket Garden Story in their own words:

The challenge really began after the design was shortlisted as the class had decided to build the mound of Maeshowe.

We didn't at that point know how to build a mound on a pallet!

After some discussion we decided to use a hedgehog house as the dome shape and plant the wildflowers inside it.

We prepared the planter for growing radish and beetroot to eventually turn into our Viking longboat.

Upon hearing the news that we had been selected to build our garden we planted the seeds in a rush the next day and started growing them in school.

However the school was like a superhot greenhouse and the seedlings grew too spindly. On our 3rd attempt we grew them outside.

We had volunteers from our community to help out - from a high school student to supervise the painting of our longboat, to our janitor helping the pupils cut out their swords and shields.

A pupils Grandad cut out the dragonhead . Many more parent volunteers are also on board to help out with the transportation and putting the garden together on the day. Without all their help, the garden would not have been possible.

Cutting out pieces

Watering plants

Mixing compost

Painting dragons