Logierait Primary School

Butterfly made of flowers

Bottle caps for water

Houses and archway

Every garden has a story to tell about the people who helped make it, the challenges faced, solutions found, lessons learned and the unexpected pleasures along the way.  Here is Logierait Primary School's Pocket Garden Story in their own words.

Our design is of a “Fairy Garden” and connects to the global goal of “Life on Land”. Some of the challenges we faced were making the rope bridges, because they kept falling apart! We used bottle tops as stoppers. We also had to think about where the plants were going , so that they weren’t touching. We had to alter the scale of almost everything – some things stayed the same – so that it all worked out compared to the original design. Now we just need some Fairies!

The materials used for the garden are sourced locally or reused. The stones are from the riverbank and the plants are all from seed or cuttings, from plants we already have as part of our butterfly rearing project. They include buddleia, aubretia, garlic mustard, ladies smock and nettle, all of which are food plants for the caterpillars of orange tip, comma, small tortoiseshell, peacock and red admiral butterflies, which live in our area.

The heather has been bought from a local nursery, from whom we have purchased plug plants in the past. The Fairies’ vegetable garden was sown from seed, with miniature varieties of lettuce. We used fallen logs from our Green Room where they have naturally fallen to construct the houses and have access to a local sawmill for offcuts if we need them.

The stream is made reused blue milk bottle tops. The willow for the archway was grown in our school grounds. The wire butterfly will be made from chicken wire and planted with marigolds (we plant them between carrots to discourage carrot fly) and other plants to resemble an orange tip.

Building the bridge

Tying knots

Arranging colours

Textures