St Mary Cray Primary is a small, one class intake school, it’s been part of the community for many years. The school has a high proportion of SEN children and we hope to create a peaceful area at the front, right hand side of the school where our hardworking staff and children can go to chill, spend time with nature, read stories, eat lunch and to create a gardening club for the children to learn how to grow vegetables, berry fruits and herbs.
Last year we ran a competition with the children for them to design a sensory garden. The winning idea has 4 distinct areas:
1. Taste - a fruit and vegetable garden
2. Smell - flowers and herbs
3. Touch - textured plants
4. Sound - plants and grasses that make sound. One end of the garden has a beautiful tree so we can also hang windchimes. We also hope to have a small pond for frogs that still visit the area as there used to be a pond at the school many many years ago.
In the middle we hope to have a ball fountain and seating. The whole area needs to be wheelchair accessible.
The plan we came up with for the layout is attached.
A team of parent and staff volunteers cleared the very overgrown garden at the end of last year and we are now fundraising and hope to be able to create the garden over the summer holidays.
We have already completed a fundraiser last year where we ran an Olympic themed day for the children and raised over £1800. The big hurdle we now need to get over is laying the paving and containing the flowerbeds so the whole area is wheelchair accessible, to do that we need to raise a lot more money!
This year one of our sensory garden parent volunteers, Kieran Dinnis is very kindly taking part in a Spartan Super 10k event to help raise funds for the garden.
If you would like to sponsor Kieran for completing the event, and/or donate to the garden all funds are VERY gratefully received!
We are also looking for donations of paving, soil etc as well as expert labour to help us manage/lay the paving. If you think you can help in any way please contact the project lead April White on 07960 081175