Gardens are ever evolving and with the help of our families and volunteers we have carried on adding to our initial project, but it's always good to see where it all started!

Our initial construction in 2021 took the best part of a year. We wanted to make the garden as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible from the outset, reduce waste and recycle what we could wherever possible, as well as work to a budget and keep costs down. We have done a lot of skip diving, keeping our eyes out to reclaim and repurpose unwanted and leftover materials from building works locally. Its amazing what people throw out! 

As well as new build elements, at the beginning the garden included reused roof timbers from neighbouring loft conversions, former raised pond walls from a garden in the next village and post-pandemic perspex screens to make a cold frame, offcuts from tile battens and stud wall partitioning from building sites in the village for greenhouse benching, temporary gate timbers and staging from a local church and cable reels from builders merchants for tables, unwanted plant pots, plastic trays and bottles from neighbours, laundry liquid bottles as watering cans, waste pallets from our local garden centre for compost bins and discarded packaging timber from a DIY store in the next town! 

The initial build was done through weekly volunteering sessions by parents, grandparents...and the children! We cleared the ground, measured and marked out layouts, erected support posts, laid weed-proof matting, built plant support structures and espalier fencing, created crop protection frames, laid a watering system, built a cold frame, constructed compost bins and leaf mould collectors, repaired missing greenhouse panels, strimmed, trimmed, weeded, raked and swept! Our caretaker helped with building the garden gate and running new guttering from the school hall into rainwater barrels.

We also ran two family volunteering weekends in 2021 to build, paint and fill the raised beds and strawberry tower and to lay paths, build a storage shed and plant dwarf fruit trees. Definitely a team effort from all our families to get the garden going - all learning new skills together!