Duddingston Primary School

This Pocket Garden was built by the P3b class at Duddingston Primary School.  It is full of flat rocks painted like ladybirds, bees and rainbows.

Bicycle tyre

Rainbow ladybird

Habitat created from paper

Every Pocket Garden tells a story.  Here is the story of Duddingston's Pocket Garden in their own words:

"Our pocket garden is themed around the idea of transforming our local park, which is just across the fence from the school, into a Wildlife theme park. We have included a Ferris wheel, made out of an old bike wheel, to which we would attach ‘carriages’ made from recycled mate-rials. These would hold a variety of edible plants including mint which a parent has given us lots of top tips to help with our growing.

We have included a ‘log flume’ which will involve an irrigation system to water our plants. We learnt about irrigation as part of our Ancient Egypt topic and how the river Nile was used. We want to create a fun ’edible’ tree using recycled wood and mint. We have researched our local area and have looked on the ’Friend of Figgate Park’ website. We were so interested in the different types of wildlife that live there and so we wanted to welcome them to our garden by building a bug hotel made out of recycled tins and to make our own bird feeders which would be attached to our mint tree. Many of us have spotted otters in our local park so we would like to make models of these to include them in our design. We would also like to collect shells from our local beach, Portobelllo, to further include the coasts in our design.

Be kind

Plastic bottle planters

Pansies

Splash of colour

One of our class members has great links with Ostrero Scotland and we would like to contact them with regards to using recycled materials in a creative way to make our design environmentally friendly. We have also asked our families for their gardening knowledge and would like to plant pansies and marigolds so they bloom well for May time.

The children have loved taking part in this project and already have great plans to use the mint to make tea, spinach for salad and beetroot for a chocolate cake in the future. We’ve used recycled bottles, wood, pots and tubing to bring our creation to life!

Our design cover the four themes and includes the following. 

For coasts and waters: an irrigation system, shells from our local beaches, painted pebbles from the north coast of Scotland. 

Nature on our doorstep: we created a bug hotel, herbs to attract bees and we will also be making pine cone bird feeders to hang on our “tree.”

Wildlife garden: we have planted a range of plants including oxalis, pansies, spinach, lavender, thyme and mint to name but a few. It’s already buzzing with wildlife.

One planet picnic: we propagated herbs including mint, lemon balm and thyme, where we intend to make herbal teas. We hope to use the pansy petals for some biscuits, spinach for salads and grow artichokes and beetroot over the coming months. 

The garden has come to life so closely to our design. The children have built the Ferris wheel, bug hotel, sweet pea slide and “log flume” just as on our original plan to turn it into “Duddy Theme Park Garden.”

Learning to use tools

Building the frame

Finishing touches