Pupils find peace with Beechgrove

Colinton Primary School’s ‘The Room to Grow’ project has been selected as a community garden to be featured on BBC’s Beechgrove Garden.

Filming for the one-hour special will begin in September and, in the meantime, staff and pupils at the school – with help from the Beechgrove Garden team and an experienced garden designer – will create a garden design and planting plan.

‘The Room to Grow’ project creates a garden that supports the children’s social, emotional and educational development. The aim is to strengthen relationships with parents and families by encouraging them to come into school and work alongside their children. Everyone can share skills and ideas and learn together both during and after the garden development.

Colinton Primary has a number of pupils whose families are attached to Dreghorn and Redford Barracks – currently 89 per cent of all pupils are children of army service personnel from around the UK as well as other parts of the world including Fiji, Nepal, Cyprus and Germany.

The school understands the difficulties that pupils and their families can face when they join a new school, and the project acts as a vehicle to enable a smoother transition into the school and wider community.

Although the garden will benefit all pupils, there will be particular benefits to the service children especially when they are dealing with the additional anguish of parents on deployment or returning from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.