Bishopton Primary School
The organic garden here is a sanctuary for wildlife and plants that do best in damp conditions. Bishopton Primary P3 pupils are very enthusiastic about sustainability. Their garden celebrates the soil, biodiversity, organic food growing and life-bringing water. The ground may be wet but there's plentiful food and wildlife as well people living well in this landscape. Pupils say: "Frogs can find a home here and they will eat up the slugs so they are kept away from the food for people".
Pupils at Bishopton Primary passionate about sustainability and Primary 3 have been learning how to reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle. They decided to enter the pocket picnic garden competition after spending a lot of time discussing the impact their actions can have on the environment - positive as well as negative.
This organic garden is built using old pallets to construct the base and the back.
Plant pots have been tied to the pallet with reused rope for trailing plants and there is a trellis made from bamboo canes for climbing plants to give the garden some height. The back of the garden has space for hanging baskets full of flowers.
There is a waterwheel made from reused plates and cups. Plastic bottles have been cut and used as plant pots along the sides of the garden full of plants to attract bees and butterflies and an old welly boot has been used to plant strawberries for eating later.
Bees coloured by pupils decorate the sides of the garden, and the message Bee Organic painted along the side of the base to encourage everyone to plant for pollinators.
Bee Organic!
Reused pallets and hanging plants
Bottles cut into plant pots
Pupils studied the Global Goals and explored a variety of concepts and ideas before working in groups to create their final designs based entirely on their ideas of how to think global but act local. The final design submitted focused on how to support living creatures in the environment as well as how to grow sustainable food sources.
The design was created with help from the local community and support from pupils' families and planting advice from Bishopton's own resident garden helper, Mr Scott, who showed pupils which type of plants to grow. Pupils tell us that they thoroughly enjoyed building, painting and decorating their garden and watching it come together. Pupils are overjoyed that they have brought their design to life and are delighted to have been selected to display their finished garden at Gardening Scotland.
Below is the original design entry created by P3 pupils.
This Pocket Garden is a Wetland or Fresh Water Margin Garden. These designs are inspired by the flowing water of a torrential mountain burn, the still waters of our lochs and lochans or Scotland's wetlands where the ground holds the water like a sponge in bogs, fens, marshes and wetland meadows. Wetlands help to filter and clean our fresh water, reduce flooding and store huge amounts of carbon as well as supporting wildlife. For wetland wisdom look here, here and here.
