15 October 2015
Children at a Caverswall school flexed their green fingers with a planting exercise at a local housing development in the village.
Children at St Peter’s Primary School have been studying construction, building and plants this term, and contacted Staffordshire developer Walton Homes to ask if they could visit one of their sites to see the work in progress and plant a garden for the new residents.
The youngsters went to visit The Cloisters development in Caverswall, and were taken through the plans by site manager Jason Hood, who spoke to them about the materials used for the properties and the building process.
They were then given a tour of the site and into stock plots to see what the completed houses would look like.
Finally, the children put their planting knowledge to good use and helped to landscape a flowerbed at the site. With all the properties being named after various plants, such as hyacinths, lavender and daisies, the youngsters used plants that were in-keeping with the development’s site names.
Rachel Bagshaw, year one teacher for the youngsters, said: “The children absolutely loved this, it was a really rewarding trip for them and they were so enthusiastic. They’ve been working on a number of projects that tied in with this and it was lovely to find a location here in the village where they could find out more.
“They learned all about the stone used to make The Cloisters sympathetic to the rest of the village, and it was fantastic to see how interested they were. We’ve asked if we can go back to the site when work is finished so they can see how much it’s changed,” she added.
Amy Summerton, director at Walton Homes, said: “This was a really lovely experience for us to do some valuable work with the local community, and one we’d definitely look to repeat. The children took a real interest in how new houses were built and had lots of intelligent questions about the process and the materials we used.
“They really enjoyed landscaping the area for our future home-owners and we were impressed with the standard of their work. We’ve commemorated their efforts with a special plaque to let people know exactly who was responsible for the flowerbed.”
