Final Preparation and Meeting the PTA Team

On Wednesday 4th October, we went back to the school to finalise our ideas and start plotting pathways onto our field area. We did this by pegging string paths around the plot. This helped us to work out what areas we will be including within the meadow. In the end we decided on: a reflection area, a log seating area, a bird area, a bug area and a hedgehog area. We then created a visual representation of this so that people could see our plans.

Later in the afternoon, Mrs Gasser arranged for us to meet some of the members of the PTA team, Tammy, Nikki and Dom. We wanted to talk to them about our plans as they are the people that are helping to fund our project. We didn't want to spend their money without their go ahead. Luckily, they were happy with our ideas and seemed very excited to see the project get underway. One request that they did have was to somewhere include a plaque that explained that the funding was from the PTA team, which we were more than happy to incorporate. As the PTA have such good communication with both the junior and infant school, we wondered whether they could post a flyer that we created on their Facebook page to see if any parents could donate any resources that could be useful for our project. Getting the whole school involved is really important to us!

Later in the week, we all went hunting for free resources and donations from local garden centres. Lizzie went onto the Facebook marketplace and found some free pallets, which will be really useful for creating the benches and including in the bug hotel. We did however encounter a bit of a problem, we didn't know how to collect them from the seller. Luckily, Dom came to our rescue and offered to collect them for us with his trailer. Thank you Dom!!!! Natasha went and visited Homebase in Chichester as we heard that they're closing down and were giving away resources. After speaking to numerous managers it was finally agreed that we could have two bags of bark chipping, one bag of compost, some seeds and two holly trees. Thank you so much to the staff at Homebase for being so generous!!! Natasha was also able to organise and collect some donations from members of the public near where she lives on Hayling Island. We were lucky enough to be given logs, wild flower seeds and fern plants.


Georgia contacted and spoke to some local carpenters to discuss the process of making the benches. She explained to them the designs we were looking at and why we wanted that particular shape and size so that they could give their thoughts and opinions. One very helpful carpenter, Carl, went to Chichester College to promote our project at the school and they very kindly offered to donate the materials we would need for the benches. Thank you Chichester College!!! It has now been arranged for Carl to come to the school during half term to take accurate measurements of the plot and give up his time to help us with the making of our benches.