Over the last year we’ve been working on a very exciting collaboration – re-designing and installing a brand new garden space for Ysgol Cilgerran!
Our joint vision for this project was to hold a truly cooperative design process, between the children, teachers, governors, and Ffynnon staff, to showcase what the community can achieve when it comes together.
It all started a year ago, when we held some creative sessions jointly with Child of the Earth forest school leaders, and gathered some fantastic feedback from classes at Ysgol Cilgerran on what they enjoyed about their current outdoor spaces, and what they wanted to see more of. We then took this general brainstorm to the kid’s Eco Council and held a second session, where the eco council helped us map out a design for the garden, and the kids got to input their creativity, their preferences, and their hopes for a garden space – from the totally whacky, to the really practical! (We had to say no to the rollercoaster skate ramp unfortunately…)
Once we’d whittled it down to something more feasible, Ffynnon staff drew up an official map and budget based on the kid’s ideas, and sent it over to the teachers/governors to give the various ideas a stamp of approval, or a pass on. This resulted in our final design!
Fast-forward to this year, and we’ve been busy ordering plants, topsoil and playground equipment to bring it into reality. In early May, we had a fantastic volunteer day with such a good community vibe – Ffynnon volunteers, teachers, kids, parents, grandparents, and members of the local community all turned up to pitch in and turn a brambled wasteland into a garden. We had tea and juice, bacon sarnies and cakes to fuel everybody, and all had a great time! Now Ffynnon and school staff are putting in the final touches, ready for a garden opening this summer.
The garden is truly meant to be a sensory garden – there’s fruit and herbs for taste, scented flowers for smell, beautiful trees, flowers, and shrubs for sight, a sand box and nice lawn for touch, and a fountain and performance stage for sound! There are playbenches and some log seats to come, to encourage socialising and creative play, too. It is our hope at Ffynnon that this gorgeous space will inspire a whole new generation of local children to connect to and value nature in their lives to come.