Green Fingers!

Our theme this month is Wildlife.

Paul has been out in the garden this weekend tending to the new improved water feature which will hopefully be home to lots of new wildlife that will be visiting the garden over the coming months. We now have a shallow pool at the end of the stepped rocks where we will be growing lily pads and other water plants.  Of course safeguarding was our number one priority. We have talked about water safety with the children and Paul has also made the water feature completely child proof by installing a metal grid which covers it.

The children have been busy in the garden today, helping to create a wildlife corner which we will be building around the water feature.  We have been planting wild flowers, cosmos and french marigold seeds which we hope will attract lots of ladybirds, dragonflies and butterflies.  The children were also very interested in the new ladybird nesting pole which I installed today.

It has holes drilled upwards into the centre where ladybirds will hopefully take shelter.  We hope that when our seeds start to grow, ladybirds will be attracted to the garden and set up home here.

To help them on their way, all of the children each planted their own "Mammoth" sunflower seeds in a pot which have been labelled.  This variety of sunflower has been known to reach up to 20 feet tall! We will be recording their growth on a chart and will be having a competition to see who's sunflower grows the tallest!



Here is Ella sowing her sunflower seeds.

The rest of our garden is coming on nicely thanks to the children's efforts.  Our strawberry plants which we planted back in March now have several flowers on them and our lettuces are blooming!  The Vegetable corner is really coming along now. The children have been doing a great job watering the seedlings each day.


Our lettuces are blooming!



Our first strawberry flower

   You may also remember last year we were lucky enough to receive a free Rowan tree from the BBC as part of their Breathing Spaces for Schools project.  The Rowan tree was a tiny sapling when it first arrived, with no leaves.  It got a little mistreated in the harsh winter we had and was blown this way and that... We didin't think our little sapling would amount to much.  However look at it now!  Full of leaves and it now standing proudly next to the chicken coop about 3 feet tall.

Well I better dash for now.  I will be back again soon with more updates on what we have been up to and will upload photos of our wildlife corner as it grows.