On 26th April, Porty held its annual School Grounds Saturday Surgery, with a good turn out of staff, pupils and parents all helping to spring clean our biodiversity garden. Some much-needed sprucing up included the fence being mended by our excellent committee member Mr Christie, below:

Miss Macmillan and her helpers cleared our flowerbeds, which have some growing gems such as buddleia, honeysuckle, birch (!) rosemary and primrose.

Mrs Falconer and her wee helper started our new sensory garden, which will contain plants that are soft, bright, sweet-smelling and rustling (see bamboo, below!).

We still have a long way to go. Our John Muir enrichment group will be spending time in the garden doing conservation work, including digging up some of the area seen below to plant some wild flowers. The photo also shows our elder tress, which now produce a great deal of berries that the FTT department plan to use in recipes later in the year. The CDT department also plan to make picnic benches and bins so pupils can enjoy their lunch breaks in the garden more easily.

That’s all from us for now, after two very quick updates! We look forward to holding more Saturday Surgeries in the future (always with bacon rolls and hot drinks for our well-deserving volunteers!) and also hope that parents, as well as pupil and staff, may choose to come and maintain the garden during the summer holidays, when the thistles tend to come back with a vengeance… Please comment below if you wish to come and help us – let us know when you can help out!