St. Mary's School, Melrose

We have started to grow our little seedlings indoors in the hope that soon we will be able to move them outside. Our P4 children are very excited to take this on as their project though we hope that the whole school will benefit.

During lockdown, when everyone missed their friends, we have been dreaming of being able to come together for a picnic. The children started by drawing this.

Lots of pots 

Painting pallets 

Seedlings in cups

After washing out lots of yoghurt pots in our wish to reduce single use plastic we got busy planting our seeds.

Our idea is to bring these little seedlings on by transplanting them into progressively bigger pots. Hopefully by the time the summer holidays come it will be time to break up our little garden and send everyone home with a flourishing plant.

We plan to build our picnic basket which will hold our precious plants from wooden crates donated by a generous local greengrocer.

A very good friend of the school, Alan, has already started to stain the boxes with wood preservative for us. We are excited about working in this modular form as it will allow us to try out different combinations.

We have discussed so many design ideas and have decided that we would like to weave some willow to make a basket frame around the containers.

Maybe we could even make some willow children who would enjoy our picnic!

We have started to make some 3D bees as we begin to understand the importance of the insect family in our eco system.

This feels like a truly organic project and we know that our ideas will grow alongside our little plants.

As we move towards summer we look forward with such joy to sharing our school grown picnic with those who we have so missed over recent months.

Watch the video from the pupils at St Mary's School