Renewed: Pre-school nursery's beds

AFTER: With the help of the children we dug all the sand out of the pond. It became a treasure hunt as we unearthed lots of lost plastic animals and pieces of lego. I cleaned the container and rocks then filled it back up with fresh water. I weeded the beds and filled them up with some fresh multi-purpose compost. On one bed I put down some old pink jersey fabric I had as a membrane. "Are you making a bed?" one boy asked. Underneath it I had put some kitchen peelings for the worms and bran flakes for the slugs.; the slugs love to eat them and it kills them. I then cut slits and planted some chives I had brought in and divided from my own garden, some red and green loose leaf lettuce and cosmos I had raised from seed and some strawberries the manageress of the nursery had bought. She had also bought some pebbles so I put those around the base of the plants. The whole bed can be covered with them. In the other bed I put four canes around a metal pole. The canes came from prunings of my neighbour's bamboo. There were some sharp edges where the stems had been trimmed so I tied some fabric strips on to cover them. I planted some more chives and two tomato plants. I left the chopped off stems of the chives on top of the soil. I have some sweetcorn, cucumbers, snake gourd and courgette plants that I am raising at home and will bring in when they are a bit bigger. And I will bring in some bean seeds for the children to sow next to the canes.