Coastal Plants are Starting to Thrive

It’s not only the students at Severndale Specialist School who are getting involved with this garden, a handful of green fingered folk from Lanyon Bowdler are also contributing to the stunning show garden which will be built at Shrewsbury Flower Show.

The plants have been selected and sourced by our talented garden designer, Mike Russell and both Yana and Louise, who grew plants for the Headway Shropshire show garden, volunteered to provide some TLC to our little plants again this year.

Yana and Louise collect their plants

Something a little different – Sempivirum plants are thriving at Rachel’s home…

Looking healthy!

Some warmer weather is forecast for the coming weekend – fingers crossed – but of course that means more watering will need to be done!

The Blenny Fish Works!

This wonderful feature has been in testing and it looks as though it is going to a stunning piece in our garden.

Getting ready for testing

And it works..

Beachcombing on the Pembroke Coast & we have a Boat!

As part of the garden project for the school – and the show garden to be created for Shrewsbury Flower Show in August, some of the students enjoyed a field trip to the Pembroke Coast recently.

Students enjoy beachcombing

Staying at Dale Fort, the students and teachers spent time on the beach looking for washed up pieces of rope and driftwood.  Judging by these photos everyone had a great time!

Students scrambling over rocks

Activities are being overseen by a cute Spaniel

The seaside themed garden is starting to come together – as well as the beautiful copper blenney fish water feature, we now have the central focal point – a boat!

Traditional clinker boat

It needs a little work in order for it to be suitable for use at the school, but it looks great and will be a perfect piece for the show garden.

What a Fishy Creation

As August and the Shrewsbury Flower Show loom in the distant horizon, I’m starting to feel slightly anxious as to it all coming together – experience tells me it will be OK, but it’s certainly very reassuring to see the first key element of the garden finished. This copper fish is the work of coppersmith Richard Taylor, who in my opinion (one that is shared by everyone I’ve shown the photograph to!), has created the most stunning feature.

Copper rocking Blenny

He tells me that depending on the pressure of water, the Blenny will rock at varying speeds – I am sure we will opt for something nice and tranquil.

A number of pupils at the school have been involved so far, but more will enjoy a field trip this week when they go to collect driftwood and old bits of rope on the Welsh Coast.

When I popped along to the school a week or so ago, there was plenty of excitment about the project.

Copper Workshop Produces Amazing Pieces

Coppersmith Richard Taylor has carried out some workshops with the students at Severndale Specialist School – click on his name and you will see what a talent he is.

Richard Taylor working with a class of students

Working with the students, and teachers, he has clearly inspired some stunning creations.

Selection of copper tiles created at workshops

The students now have the task ahead to create all the scales for fitting onto the ‘fish’ water feature which will form part of the garden at Shrewsbury Flower Show.

Getting all fishy

The garden is being sponsored by Lanyon Bowdler – a firm of solicitors based in Shropshire & Herefordshire that very much believes in working with communities and charities.  Staff from the firm will be growing coastal plants at home, providing some therapeutic after work activity!

Our talented garden designer Mike Russell has not only designed the show garden element of this project, he has also produced the concept as to how the garden will look, once fully fitted at the school – it is going to be interesting watching it all come together.

What happens next?  Well we must get growing – so diary entries will follow on successes and failures!  Trips to the coast to find driftwood – more art classes at the school and the boat, photos showing the progress of this will be posted soon.

Chalking Out the Garden at Severndale Specialist School

This project is going to involve the creation of 2 different sized gardens.  The feature garden for displaying at Shrewsbury Flower Show has to be a certain size – and it’s not very big!  Back at the Monkmoor Campus we have much more space to fill, so we have a challenge on our hands!

Mike has drawn up some fresh sketches:

Slightly Reduced Garden!

It is going to be really colourful and there is bound to be a wow factor! We already have some fantastic support on board, including Dingle Nurseries from Welshpool, a boat builder on the south coast and a coppersmith, plus we have found some textured material to be used for the flooring – see shot below.

An amazing choice of colours will mean this flooring will really have an impact

So of course, given the reduction in the size of the garden for the show, Mike thought it wise to chalk it out at the school – complete with fishes!

Not content with just marking the size out, we have waves and fish included!

We soon realised the show garden is quite bit smaller than this paved area at the school, but we are all optimistic that we can sort things out…..  More fun when it’s not completely straightforward!

We are thrilled to have had a couple of sails donated:

An old Laser sail donated for the garden

Time is marching on, the school is now on half term, soon it will be the Easter holidays and we need some trips to the seaside.  Some of the pupils will be off to a site on the Pembroke coast in May to collect shells, driftwood etc, from that trip we will have some photos and video footage.  In the meantime, we need to start a planting programme, so this coming week we’ll be creating a ‘timeline’ to ensure we don’t miss anything!  Hopefully from now on we will also post on this blog more often.

Dingle nurseries

Mike and Rachel have been to Dingle nurseries to look at some fantastic plants for the show garden. Nursery owner Andrew is helping Rachel size some Box plants.