Year 5 school children from 5 local primary schools have taken part in a competition to design the planting of 6 seafront flower beds at Ryde.
The innovative ‘Heritage Horticulture’ initiative, led by Jenna Sabine of Monkton Arts, saw students from Greenmount, Oakfield, St Helen’s, Dover Park and St Mary’s Primary Schools take part in the competition to improve the beds at Eastern Gardens, adjacent Ryde Pavilion.
To beat COVID restrictions, Jenna provided a remote video lesson and resources to each school. After learning about Victorian Ryde, the Plant Hunters who travelled the world and the history of flower beds, the children were asked to create pixelated designs for the beds, based on themes chosen from the continents of the world.
The winning design from each class has now been planted up by the John ‘O Connor team, landscape management contractors working for the Isle of Wight Council.
The winners from each school were:
- Dover Park – Europe – Harry G – IOW design
- St. Mary’s – Australia – Jacob G – Fish design
- Greenmount Hockney – Asia – Jonathan – Snake design
- Greenmount Aires – Africa – Jaidan – Sunset design
- St Helens – America – Sam – Cactus design
- Oakfield – Africa – Nina – Giraffe design
The winners and runners up will be invited to Osborne House to see Queen Victoria’s favourite home and magnificent gardens, providing an educational day out with their parents in the summer holidays.
Mr Evens, Year 5 class teacher from Greenmount Primary School, has said:
“Both classes thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the ‘Heritage Horticulture’ project. From the start, all the children were incredibly engaged and excited to take part in a scheme that they would be able to go and see once it was completed.
Article continues below this advertisement “The children were fascinated by the history of plants and the links to Darwin and Osborne House. During the activity, both classes were given an opportunity to learn about different countries and cultures. They were then able to analyse the different colours/themes from their continent before applying this knowledge to create a pattern.
“When creating their flower bed designs, they were taking their time and making thoughtful decisions about what colours/patterns would work best for their project. The children couldn’t wait to find out who won, and they are so excited about seeing the winners design after it’s been planted.”
The ‘Heritage Horticulture’ schools competition is part of the ‘Railway Gardens’ scheme, this being one of the pilot projects associated with Island Line’s Community Rail Partnership’s proposed Down the Line initiative.
It’s good to get children interested in horticulture but I do sincerely hope any choices made will be for plants that attract pollinating insects, provide nectar for bees and seeds for those bird species that rely on them, like certain thistles for Goldfinches, and also some plants that certain Moths and Butterflies rely on. Too often all that sort of thing is sadly ignored in favour of what people think “looks nice”. Rows of bright red bedding plants might appeal to some people but are not always the right sort to benefit our environment. Please include some plants that will attract bees and butterflies.
Why not just turn it into a wildlife garden maybe with a pond?
That would be a good idea, but sadly it would be vandalised in no time and rubbish and I dread to think what else thrown in the pond. There used to be two ponds on Ryde seafront with fish in, and in Ratcliffe Avenue, they were all filled in, maybe it cost too much for the upkeep, but used to get rubbish dumped in them.