I spent today at my new school, MDJS (Michael Drayton Junior School) working on the new WildLearning Space. As I mentioned briefly in my last blog post from this school, this WildLearning Space is going to be a very big part of my work next year and there will be a whole website dedicated to it appearing in the new year!
Today, I joined Simon Venn of Simon Venn Garden Design (see his website HERE) and an amazing team of managers from Severn Trent, to complete the next stage of the area. Simon has been ensuring that my design has been translated into reality in the area and has coordinated all the work so far, as I have been working at Water Orton. Severn Trent are supporting the project and their managers volunteered today to spend a day helping to lay the paths! The Severn Trent team had already dug out all the paths and the pond. With the forecast pretty dire to say the least, we were all ready to get wet….. and very muddy!
I had chosen recycled tyre chippings for the paths and two huge bags had been delivered. Severn Trent organised the delivery of wheelbarrows and spades and we started …
We lined the paths and wheel-barrowed an awful lot of chippings into all of the path areas, ankle-deep in very sticky, clay-type mud and in the pouring rain, but what an amazing team and the weather didn’t deter at all, as we gradually turned muddy paths into lovely chipping-filled ones… very satisfying!
Yes….. my wellies are under there somewhere! Thank goodness for my Ridgeline waterproof trousers and coat that I am trialing… I certainly put the to the test today and they performed brilliantly!
I have been buzzing all day as the path filling has started to make my plan for this area start to come alive and defined, what are going to be, the different ‘zones’. We have big plans for 2013 and you will be hearing a lot about it in the coming months.
A massive thanks to all of the team today…this is going to very much be a joint venture with lots of people being involved over the coming months to create a truly unique and very exciting learning space!