About time I let you know where we’re up to.
Firstly, all the lovely 12 raised beds that we thought we were getting didn’t materialize; the quote came in way over budget. ::) But, we did manage to get two long (about 35ft x 4ft) beds in the junior area and two more slightly smaller in the infant dept. Trouble is, they’re not raised either – the contractors dug out some concrete, edged it with a bit of softwood and chucked a bit of topsoil in, so don’t know how well anything will grow in it. :-\ As you can imagine, we were a bit deflated after all the thoughts of lovely raised beds! But, ever hopeful, we’ll do what we can with it. We were going to ask the Manicscousers to come and cut the ribbon to officially open our fantastic new allotment site while they’ve been such a help to us, but we’re too embarrassed now… :-[ ;D ;D ;D
The local council composting and recycling officer is coming into school next week to talk to all the children, so we’re using this as a launch for the gardening club proper. We’ve decided to call it the “Grow Your Own Grub Club”. Up to now, the older children have been able to come and help us to keep the weeds down from time to time, but after the ‘launch’ we should be able to get things moving and start involving all the children in the planning etc.
We had a local firm donate a shed to us which was good of them, and it hasn’t yet been broken in to. ;)
We have acquired a 6’x8’ greenhouse from a lovely lady on Freecycle which we hope to erect later in the year.
Have to big-up Bulldog Tools here too. We sent them an email to see if they would like to donate anything for our cause and they said they would. Elsie and I went down to their showroom and, to cut a long story short, we came away with over £200 worth of tools!!! :o They were fantastic. We had expected perhaps a couple of trowels and hand forks. ;D
Further to this, the marketing manager got in touch a few weeks later to ask us if the school would like to be involved in creating a garden at the factory. Not knowing what they really had in mind, we went up to the factory site with our boss on Thursday to meet with them and have a look at the land. What they want to do is to completely makeover the borders of a long winding driveway which has been left to grow wild over the years – a real eyesore. So, of course, we said we’d love to be involved – such an opportunity for the kids to see the difference they can make to some basically derelict land. Bulldog will get all the heavy work done and leave us a blank canvas to design and plant up. How good is that, eh? Hope it all comes off, will let you know more as and when.
