Spark of Genius Skypoint School

The Bankie Barrow

The pupils of Spark of Genius, Skypoint school have had lots of fun creating this garden in a reclaimed wheelbarrow. The garden links the story of 'The Crane' to local landmarks. The garden's Cochno stones are almost hidden in the cress however that mirrors real life as these stones are currently preserved and covered. 

Skypoints' crane and river

'The Crane' story in herb basket

Our garden tells the story of the Titan Crane, the River Clyde, the Erskine Bridge and the Cochno Stones.

These are all local landmarks that young people in our school are familiar with and see regularly. We focused on a book called The Crane, that centres around a town with a large crane and a man whos’ one desire is to work on the crane. His life changes throughout the book but the one constant that remains is his love of the crane.

We chose this story initially as the Titan Crane has such a large local presence. However, through reading the book we could look further into how the mans’ life changed, what affected him, and how this was relevant to the young people.

Our garden has birdfeeders, butterfly feeders, grass made from coriander, cress and tomato plants and our tree is a basil plant. All these plants are edible. and hopefully our cucumber plant will yield fruit too.

We re-used an old, abandoned wheelbarrow as the base for our garden as we don’t have any outdoor space. We sourced some leftover guttering to add to the side. The stones, shells and wood were all collected from beaches along the river Clyde. The old tea set and picnic basket was found in a charity shop, along with some broken Meccano we used to make our crane. We made a donation to Cancer research so we could repurpose it. We have an empty, used tin growing our cucumber plant. We have used an old, chipped mug to grow some plants in.

The Skypoint young people have learned how to grow plants from seed, how to nurture and look after them. They enjoyed using preloved items and making them useful again rather than hitting landfill. They were very enthusiastic about designing and creating the garden, and all young people were involved. They worked well as a team.

Some of the parents have given the pupils gardening advice, in particular a Dad who is a gardener. We have also connected with a local gardening group who have created a ‘secret garden’, we are hoping to take our wheelbarrow along to be displayed once we have had our school open day and all parents/carers and visitors have viewed it.

As an ASN school, this is the first time we have taken on the challenge of becoming an Eco-Schools Green Flag school and entering a design competition.  It was a huge achievement to have our design selected to be created. The pupils have really enjoyed this experience and it has given us a chance to start gardening and tie in with our Eco work. This has been a very positive experience for the pupils and staff.

Garden Design