Welcome to our Newton St Cyres school wildlife & learning gardens fundraising page.

As you may have heard, a small group of us are leading a project to create wildlife friendly spaces within the school grounds to support our children with outdoor learning, as well as give them colourful, peaceful and playful areas to spend time in.

We are also creating a sensory garden which will be filled with colourful plants, wind chimes, long grasses and fruit trees as a place for children to relax and enjoy watching the bees buzz by!

Last year, thanks to the kind donations from parents and other family members, the Beer Engine’s fundraiser quiz and being successful with a couple of grants we applied for, we’ve been able to raise £1000 for the school gardens project! This money has got us off to an amazing start, enabling us to…

- Plant two circular orchards of fruit trees including apple, quince, pear & plum

- Create 3 raised vegetable beds, one of which is now filled with masses of strawberry plants and a giant artichoke!

- Create a large, shallow pond with pond plants including marsh marigolds and lilies. The pond already has some wildlife living in it including newts, pond skaters and diving beatles - perfect for the kids to do some pond dipping!

- Create seating areas for the children to sit and enjoy the spaces - this includes wooden benches and log seats

- Build a shed to store all the gardening tools for the children to use

- Buy an extra long hose for watering the trees and flowers in the summer months

- Create two raised flower beds in the shape of butterflies and fill with aromatic herbs and lavender

- Buy plenty of compost for all the plants we’ve planted

- And last but not least, thanks to Chris, planted a stunning wildflower meadow which was the star of the show last summer!

Whilst we’ve achieved a lot, there is a still a lot more to do. Our funds are back down to £0 and before we can do much more, we need to raise some extra funding to:

- Buy an arbour with a seat for the sensory garden where we’ll grow climbing roses to create a peaceful place for children to sit

- Plant some bigger tree saplings to help create a woodland glade at the bottom of the rec, as we sadly lost some of the smaller saplings the children planted last year

- Buy more compost to fill the raised veg beds so the children can start growing their own veg this spring / summer

- Outdoor paints and wood for the children to make signs and artwork for the gardens

- Buy some more plants including

tall grasses to plant in the sensory area

We hope you agree that these new outdoor spaces will benefit your child’s / children’s well-being, learning and general enjoyment at school.

So, if you’re able to support this project by making a donation, even if it’s just a few pounds, it would be enormously appreciated…it’ll help ensure we can get our children’s school gardens up and running over the next few months in time for the warmer weather.

Thank you so much!

Becca & Oonagh