On Wednesday this week, we took our sunflower plants to Frank Nicol's garden centre. They are now on display to the public for people to guess which will be the tallest. We are raising money for
Sense Scotland to help them buy sensory toys for deaf-blind children. Frank Nicol's have kindly supplied the prize of a £20 voucher. Above you can see Dale who has just given the plants a feed, and Rob who works at the garden centre. We'd like to thank him for taking care of the plants for the summer holidays. So if you are visiting Frank Nicols, take a look and see which you think will be the winner! Guesses are 50p and there is an honesty box for your donations.
Meanwhile on Monday this week, there was an activity day in the garden. Here you can see Carrie, Danielle and Dale modelling our new "Ghillie Kettle" bought with funds raised from the bake sale.
The main job for the morning was to treat the new sheds and paint horticultural terms on the doors!
They have a large surface area! It was also difficult as the board is very bumpy!
We might add more words in future...
...filling the kettle with water (the fire is burning inside so the top is the chimney; the water goes into the spout and fills the double skin around the outer part of the kettle.
We can now heat up water with just a few dry sticks!
Dale pours the water to make hot chocolate!
After a rainy lunch sheltering in the shed, we ventured out to the fruit garden.
Alexander and Ryan get stuck in with the weeding...
...then we laid a thick layer of wood chip as a mulch.
On Tuesday, pupils who had not opted to go out on other activities were roped in to helping in the garden! They all worked really hard and even if they did not admit it, I think they had a great time in the sun and fresh air! Above, you can see the greenhouses as usual...
...Kasper removing the screws attaching the base to the ground...
...and now they are gone!!
We moved them temporarily to the top of the garden along with all the paraphernalia from within. This is to prepare for a contractor to come in during the summer holidays and create a flat platform where we hope to have an Outdoor Classroom built next spring so "watch this space!"
Mrs Mackie was also keeping pupils busy - weeding, planting and mulching all the raised beds.
They are now looking better than ever thanks to everyone's hard work.
Edibles and floral planted together - "companion planting" to encourage beneficial insects and reduce pests.
There are still lots of plants waiting to go into the ground! More than we can cope with at the moment! Our team of volunteers will be coming in to look after the garden during the holidays so hopefully some of them will get planted out.
So, this is DiGGers "signing off" for six weeks. We break up tomorrow (Thursday) and look forward to returning in August. So "Happy Gardening" to all our followers and we hope you enjoy your own gardens over the coming weeks. We hope there will be some rain to keep things watered whilst we are away!
