Week 3

What a difference just a couple of days can make. This time last week we had beautiful, warm Spring sunshine right up to the weekend.  This week we are dodging heavy and prolonged showers! There's somewhat of a chill in the air too, with talk of some snow!

We had more cutting back and clearing to do today, with most of the Busy Beez cutting back a huge climber in our flowerbed by the offices, along with two rather large hebe's that have outgrown their allotted space.

There was deadheading to do in the hanging baskets to prolong the flowering of our pretty pansies, and the challenge to build some staging was met headlong by some of the older Beez.

The frogs in our Wildlife Garden pond have been busy too. Frogspawn has been appearing in the last couple of weeks, with sightings today of our first tadpoles! 

Week 2

Spring has certainly arrived at Shooters Grove. Here and there pockets of vibrant colour can be seen.

The hard work of last Autumn has paid off and what seemed like empty troughs, pots and baskets just a couple of weeks ago, is now alive with an explosion of flowers

From the electric blue Iris to the palest of creamy-white Crocus, this blast of colour has the power to bring a smile to your face on even the dreariest of March mornings.

Today has been good to the Busy Beez Gardening Club. It stayed dry throughout the session. Sunny even. The younger ones set to tidying up the carpark bed, and the Y6's began sowing seeds.

We have a great many seeds to sow, a lot of which will require direct sowing where they are to either flower or harvest.

Today we sowed French Beans, Lettuce, Marigolds and Nasturtiums. The latter two are planned as 'companion plants'.

The beans were sowed into toilet paper tubes, and we discussed how certain plants dislike root disturbance, and how the tubes will be planted along with the young bean plants, when the time comes.

Week 1

Warm Spring sunshine greeted us today for the first meeting in 2010 of our Busy Beez Gardening Club. Ten Y6's gathered after an early lunch, and joined the first batch of Y2's all eager to get something growing.

Today was about preparation however. Our massive colletion of Morrison's Let's Grow vouchers had afforded us an amazing amount of gardening paraphernalia from seeds and trays; watering cans to kneelers and not one, but two compost bins. But that is not all. We also collected enough vouchers for a beautiful new greenhouse, along with staging! 

Now all we need are some strong and willing volunteers (parents?) to help us erect it...

The Busy Beez certainly lived up to their name today as we moved all these goodies from the Parent's Room to the Wildlife Garden, and our storage container. Once all the compost was stacked neatly, and the tools stored away, we turned our attention to the regular jobs. Jobs that will need to be done every day in the absence of myself and Mrs H.
Each of the ten Y6's has a responsibility to feed our 'Darlek' composter. These jobs include collecting and shredding newspapers and junk mail from home, collecting used teabags from the staffroom, and the fruit and veg waste from the KS1 classrooms each lunchtime. The kitchen staff have also agreed to leave us a bucket of peelings etc. so it shouldn't take very long to fill our first compost bin!

Since we eventually fancy the idea of growing something, we set the younger children to rubbing off the long white shoots that had formed on the seed potatoes in transit. The children then decided which way up had the most 'eyes' and sat them in empty egg boxes to 'chit'.

To all those involved in the vouchers, from the shopping to the counting, pat yourselves on the back. We thank you!

Coming Soon

Check back later to see our progress