A Year in the life of the School Garden

Autumn 2006

This is how our garden looked before the work started.

January and February 2007

Work on our raised garden began in January and continued in February.

A wooden wall was built all around the area and then it was filled with soil.

March 2007

Dr Montague joined us to help create our learning garden. We met every Wednesday for 45 minutes during term time and had lots of fun while learning about plants and the garden.

We planted

· Hollyhocks, Honeysuckle, Trailing Nasturtiums, Sweet Peas, Coreopsis and Forget-Me-Nots

· Onions, Red broad beans, Lettuces, Radishes, Sage, Chives, Thyme

David dug out the grass and weeds from outside the fence, so they would not grow into our garden.

April 2007

Before the Easter holiday, we planted some mixed annuals, strawberry plants and more radishes.

May 2007

In May we harvested our first radishes and lettuces. We also trimmed the Chives - a popular activity. We tasted them all and took some home to share with our families.

We planted more radish seeds and lettuce plants in addition to a row of Rocket, and variety of tomato plants.

June 2007

June proved to be a very busy and exciting month. We planted two cucumber plants and two courgette plants and another row of Rocket.

We put netting over the delicious strawberries and planted Antirrhinum and Love Lies Bleeding.

We also planted the French Marigolds and weeded the Forget-Me-Nots.

We harvested more lettuce, lots of Sweet Peas and our first strawberry!

We ate our first Broad Beans - raw - absolutely delicious!

July 2007

July continued to be great fun when we harvested Sweet Peas, Rocket, and weighed the Broad Beans!

We took 19 beautiful bunches of Sweet Peas home to our families!

We ate Nasturtium leaves which were tasty and easy to get at!

August 2007

During August, Dr Montague continued to tend the garden while we were on holiday. Our thanks go to Dr Montague for all his support and hard work.

September 2007

We returned to school in September to an exciting month. We harvested onions, cucumbers, melons and tomatoes. We collected seeds from the Nasturtiums and Coreopsis.

We felt really proud of all our produce and shared it with our families.

During art we used our garden to look for pattern in nature.

October 2007

In October we began getting the garden ready for winter, collecting the last of the produce and seeds and generally tidying up.

After the winter months, the process will start again, to create a beautiful garden for us all to learn in and enjoy throughout 2008!