Double award highlights Uryside Primary's green credentials
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Efforts to engage the whole school in gardening and environmental learning at Uryside Primary in Inverurie have lead to a bumper crop of awards.
The Garden Schools initiative is being run in the north-east as a collaboration between the voluntary organisation One Seed Forward and the School of Education in the University of Aberdeen.
Two schemes see pupils work towards a Climate Action Award and a Garden Schools Award which is run at various levels of participation.
For the garden award, from the starter level 1 where pupils select three types of plants and which can be started with just one class at a location, progress continues through to the highest level 5 - for which Uryside have the honour of becoming the first ever school to achieve - which engages the whole school.
As One Seed Forward's Bob Donald explained: "Each participating school goes through stages from the basic introduction at level 1 which sees them grow their first plants through to level 5 where they are planning gardens, selecting varieties, growing, harvesting, cooking and eating the end produce.
"To get to this stage is huge amount of work and the only other schools closest to them are on level 3."
Deputy head David Shanks said: "Its also about pupil and teacher involvement and outdoor learning including growing plants and the whole school is involved as well as the community help which we have had from the Rotary.
"We're growing things like strawberries, raspberrys, pumpkins, potatoes and onions which were all started at the beginning of the year and were are also growing tomatoes and cumbers in the school.
"The Rotary helped with planting recently for the Queen's Jubilee and every child planted a tree."
Rotary president Bill Duncan commented: "It gave us great pleasure to be be invited to help and we were very impressed when every class got involved.
"There knowledge of trees was very impressive and you only get that when they are engaged and interested.
The overall aim of the Garden School project is to involve schools in being active participants in creating a physical garden space in their school that can be used to educate children in the benefits of growing their own food.
Uryside's award has seen them grown more than 10 types of edible plants, share their produce with community groups as well as prepare healthy food from the garden.
The Climate Action Award was made for recognition of efforts to attract birds and wildlife including creating a butterfly area, planting pollinators, being chemical free, mulching and composting and reducing water consumption through rain barrels.
For information on the scheme and upcoming seed sharing events visit https://oneseedforward.co.uk/
