Tullynessle Primary School

The Arctic Coral Reef

Our garden celebrates wildlife, nature and compassion. This was chosen because our schools values consider kindness and compassion when thinking about being kind, inclusive, respectful, happy, honest and so on. We also chose this because as a school we are focusing on the rights of the child so have an awareness of our rights.

Willow tiki hut

Nasturtium volcano

Waterfall

Our garden is wildlife friendly as it includes a bug hotel/area, it’s made with recycled/re-usable materials. When it truly flowers it will draw insects especially bees. At Tullynessle with have many mining bees so really like to care for bees. We have used natural materials such as mostly local compost fully of juicy goodies, wool from our local friend for under the soil and over in parts to repel snails. We have also used materials gathered from our garden shed and polytunnel such as canes and twine. Our garden has edible chives, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuces, carrots, nasturtiums, borage and peas. We reused palettes from a local farmer, wood and willow within our school that we grow and collect, pots, cloth for under the soil that has been used before and insulates/contains soil while being breathable. We have learnt to nurture plants from February onwards each day and plant the plants in bigger pots progressively, we have learnt which plants complement each other, we have learnt that some plants thrive, and others don’t, and additional seeds need to be sown.

We have learnt that teamwork is key to growing success with a project like this. We have learnt to share our ideas, make designs and practically craft something based on a proposed plan. We have learnt how to adjust to the weather and have discovered that some years are more successful than others. We are desperate to see our flowers! We have been given pots by the local Scottish Heritage trust and seeds. We have been given compost from local members of the community. We have had a retired PSA help with our design process. After the competition we will continue to nurture the garden and anything that returns the following year will be left while we remove old plants and collect the seeds to then add more the following year. We will also share the garden with our school Nursery for small world play opportunities and our younger learners within the school. We are very sad there hasn’t been much flowering yet so would love to send a photo in a little while when flowering happens. Thank you so much for letting us compete. It has been a delightful experience.

Garden Design

The garden – from design to reality