Blenheim Palace Flower Show 2014

As our first Blackbird Academy Trust collaborative Outdoor Learning project we aimed high by designing and building a show garden for Blenheim Palace Flower Show. Our theme was 'Eat your Garden' and it was filled with edible plants and veg in our chosen colour scheme of purple and orange. These included red cabbage, purple basil, french beans, radiccio, chives beetroot and bright orange marigolds. We also had a garlic theme to promote our Garlic Farm project (with freshly harvested elephant garlic). The children were involved at every stage of looking after the plants, researching information and promotional materials, constructing the garden and welcoming visitors.

See how we built the garden in this video; Blenheim Palace Flower Show - Tuesday! - YouTube

On every show day we had teams of children from each school explaining the design and providing information about the plants. All the hard work paid off and we were thrilled to receive a gold award for garden design from Monty Don!

Read what the Oxford Mail said about the project.

New flowers for the school entrance.

The path at the entrance to the school has been looking a bit bare since the gardeners took out all the weeds, so we've ordered 120 tiny plants to put in. These include pansies, primulas and forget-me-nots which will hopefully give us some colourful winter flowers...if we take care of them!

A group of Year 5s managed to re-pot all 120 tiny 'plug' plants to give the roots room to grow bigger, before transferring them to the flower bed. Go team!
We've also prepared the soil by weeding thoroughly and adding some of our super Windale-made compost (enriched with chicken poo)!