A group of children from Strone Primary visited Glenfinart Walled Garden on Friday afternoons for 4 weeks, accompanied by school staff. They planted out seedlings of radish, broccoli, cabbage, peas, beans and pumpkins which they grew from seeds planted in school. They have also been involved in planting seeds and established plants donated to the garden e.g. sunflower seeds, strawberry plants and broom. They learned about the history of the garden, Ph soil testing and how to weed round their plants. Some of the children added their wishes to the wishing tree (one wish we all identified with was for ‘a weed free garden’).

The most memorable activity was when the children were let loose on the tyres which were to be used as planters. They spent a fun filled 15 minutes rolling on and inside the tyres which had become sports cars, sailing ships and mobile play parks.

On the last week of term Lynn Kerr gave a talk at assembly about the garden, the history and the future plans for it. She showed a powerpoint presentation of photographs of the garden, both old and new and ran the video footage from Ardentinny.org. The pupils were very interested to hear how the video had been shot and the children who worked in the garden were surprised to see how much it had changed. They pointed out to the rest of the school the areas they had planted and the tyres with which they had played. They also spoke about the plants they had put in and what they remembered about the history of the walled garden.

Many of the children were keen to visit it in the school holidays, some wanted to do some work and others were interested to hear about the Beechgrove filming days.

Lynn Kerr.

Photographs supplied by Strone School.