On Wednesday, 8 June 27 members of the High Pennine Horticultural Society visited the gardens at Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary School and what an evening we had! We were welcomed by Mrs Cross, Deputy Headteacher, Vicky Wilson and Sarah Ingwersen and all the members of Eco Club who were our guides for the visit. After tea and coffee we began our tour of the different gardens and planting areas across the school grounds.
We began in the orchard which contains the Memorial Garden and is a big, peaceful space planted with trees in memory of loved ones. We then visited the Bee Friendly Garden which was a riot of lovely colours and the Boulder Garden which was another very peaceful space with views across to the hills above Stanhope. After that, it was the Raised Beds Area which demonstrated different types of plants, including heathers, grasses and perennials and then the Allotment Garden where we were all impressed with the flourishing herb bed in its attractive geometric shape and the various vegetables. We were even more impressed by the lack of weeds and with the tidiness of the tool shed!
Our visit ended in the Early Years Garden where our guide showed us not only the sunflowers planted by the youngest children in the school but also the various items of fun equipment including a very exciting looking climbing frame.
At each garden a different guide talked to us about what they had planted and answered our questions very thoughtfully. As a small thank you for such an interesting visit our Vice President presented the Club with an Aquilegia.
The Society has been visiting gardens as part of a summer outings programme for many years but we all agreed that this had been one of our best visits. It was a great pleasure to see the children starting out on their gardening journeys and they were rightly proud of their achievements. All gardeners love to talk about their gardens and the most successful know how important it is to learn from each other. We went away having learnt so much from our evening with Eco Club. Thank you!
