Rosneath Primary School Entry 1

‘Water’ Pocket Garden

Living on the Rosneath Peninsula, children wanted to celebrate water. Together we discussed our ideas and then drew our plans for the pocket garden, bringing everything together for the final design. The children were all very eager to be fully involved in every aspect of the garden build. From sawing the wooden pallets in order to create our garden frame to building a bench to sit and enjoy the garden once completed.

We collected as many items relating to water which we could upcycle. A washing machine drum for the potatoes. A sink for a bird bath. Wellington boots for our leeks and spring onions. Buckets as planters and water bottle tops for our sign. A watering can for the strawberries and empty drinks bottles to capture rainwater. A pot lid became a bee bath and an old basin was used as a frog pond.

There were challenges and the children showed resilience. A variety of our plants were grown from seed and looked after in our classroom greenhouse. Unfortunately we all learned a tough lesson when we moved our plants outdoors. We arrived on a Monday to see our sweet peas and carrots had been munched by the slugs. Well, we did want to invite the wildlife to our garden! Not deterred, together we researched ‘friendly’ deterrents such as eggshells and decided to plant raspberries. We also have visiting deer which we love to see come to our school grounds however this means our Garden is within a fenced area as they have also enjoyed our tulips.

Some of the vegetables and flowers we have been growing will go in to our community garden.

This experience has allowed children to develop new skills and for some, a love of gardening and others, thoughts of working with wildlife and woodwork. There is no stopping the children now. We have also upcycled more pallets and created a new compost bin and will recycle for our whole school, using the compost for our garden next year.

We have been enjoying sitting in the garden, listening to the bird song and watching as the bees and bugs begin to visit the many different areas we have created.

We look forward to making potato and leek soup and eating yummy raspberries and strawberries.

Garden design