Whinhill Primary School

The River Clyde is visible from the school and has inspired this garden that shows it's tidal banks and the ships that plied its waters sailing on floral waves. The Greenock clock tower says it it is time to look after our seas.

Pupils at Whinhill Primary School chose the Coastal garden theme as they live so near the sea and are all now so aware of the danger to marine life posed by plastic in the oceans.  The Gaelic P1-3 love gardening at Whinhill, where they are lucky to have grounds with both cultivated beds and areas left to wildflowers.  They planted seeds that remind them of the colours of the shore –  flowers such as yellow Marigolds, white Alyssum and blue Borage, which will also be enjoyed by butterflies and bees. 

Plants were all grown at the school and came on well, and pupils learned how to pot up them up as they grew bigger. For a time they weren't sure if the plants would be ready for Gardening Scotland at the end of May so had alternative established plants in the school garden that could be used instead.  

Pupils wanted to tie in their local heritage to the coastal theme. It is the Bicentenary of the death of James Watt, so they thought of making models of steamships built in Greenock and of the clock-tower at Customhouse Quay to highlight those links.

After the show pupils plan to bring their Pocket Garden home and reconstruct it in the school grounds for everyone to see. They now also have an absolute bounty of seedlings to plant round the school, because they germinated so many in hopes of some of them being ready for the end of May!   

Message from Whinhill pupils is:

it is Time we all looked after our planet (Clocktower and thyme plants)

and that we need to be Inventive in our solutions to climate change (James Watt).

Model steamer

Bird feeders

The Comet

This Pocket Garden is a Coastal Garden. With an 18,000km long coastline and more than 790 islands, Scotland has lots of different types of habitat along its shores including the machair - a blend of coastal habitat, people and grazing livestock unique to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Coastal gardens can show the transitions between land and sea, fresh and salt water, calm or stormy seas. As well the machair, you can find sand dunes, mudflats, cliffs, saltmarsh and saline lagoon, each adapted to the challenges of coastal life and strong salty winds. Coastal garden inspiration here.