Pupils growing for it with orchard project

The children are digging in to make the project a reality following an award of £12,000 from Tesco who teamed up with Greenspace Scotland for its Bags of Help initiative - which offers community groups and projects help through revenue generated from the five pence charge levied on single-use carrier bags.

Nursery teacher Kate Cameron appealed to the people of Milngavie to vote for the school’s project and their support won the top award of £12,000 for the project.

Kate explained: “We had submitted a proposal to turn the waste ground behind Milngavie Nursery, surrounding the football pitch, into a community orchard. We are now into the physical creation of the orchard and it is going to be amazing!

“Our project is being managed and run by children, parents and members of the staff of Milngavie Primary School and Nursery. We are also hoping to involve interested members of the community in Milngavie and are actively looking for local volunteers.”

The project will need the support of the community and volunteers to help with the scheme - to encourage the young people who are very excited about the addition to the school and are already working hard on the orchard.

Kate added: “This will be a wonderful resource for both the school and nursery, allowing opportunities for our children to experience growing their own fruit and harvesting natural, organic food.

“It will also provide a beautiful place to play and to picnic.

“Our vision includes a polytunnel for growing our seedlings, soft fruit bushes and heritage, dwarfed fruit trees, bee hives and a wild flower meadow.”

Volunteers should email Anne Madsen at [email protected] or Kate Cameron at [email protected].

Already the change to the site is obvious.

Kate explained: “We held two work days and have made an amazing difference already.

“We cleared mountains of undergrowth and old garden waste and can see how big the orchard is going to be.

“We then rotovated sections of the ground and planted hundreds of bee friendly plants.

“The Tesco money means we can afford to buy plants and Oakwood Nursery at Killearn gave us a generous discount, while Fraser Robb Plant Hire lent us a rotovator and powerful woodchipper which allowed us to turn the garden waste into mulch to put around our fruit trees.

“We celebrated the start of the work with a family barbecue.”