A memorial garden designed by children to celebrate the lives of classmates has won the £1,000 Bishop of Norwich First Nature Award.
The children of the Clare School, on South Park Avenue, Norwich, helped create the garden as a place to remember friends and enjoy gardening and being surrounded by the natural world.
The idea for the garden came from pupils at the school for children and young people, aged three-19, with complex physical, medical and sensory needs.
They helped design and create the garden from re-used and recycled material, and are planting it with insect-friendly and native species.
Well-being wins for the children will include the fresh air and exercise of gardening, the excitement of seeing birds and butterflies colonise the space and the chance to cook with and eat produce grown in the new garden.
Presenting the prize, the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher, said he was delighted to be able to contribute. “The Clare School is a place of such joy and care and this new garden is already loved and valued by the children. It is somewhere for them to explore the beauty of creation and connect with the natural world and each other. It is an honour to be here and to be able to help this imaginative and important project.”
The prize will fund more plants and a sheltered area for one-to-one and small group sessions in the garden.
Designed to be a natural, nurturing environment, the new garden will be used for therapies to help pupils’ mental and physical wellbeing. Fourteen-year-old Daisy Ogston said she had helped with everything from designing the garden to using a mini-digger to build it, and from making bird boxes to finding bee-friendly plants. “And the lavender and roses and sage are really good for the kids who can’t see, but can smell the plants,” she said.
Many of the pupils at the Clare School have life-limiting conditions and a large, bright mural, painted by volunteer Mia Kruger, is a focal point of the memorial garden. It will include pictures of something special to each child remembered. Volunteers from the local community also helped create the garden, and teaching assistant Charlotte Bradley, who runs the gardening group, said pupils wrote to local businesses and were delighted to receive plants, expertise and equipment. David Brahams, head of communications and independence at the school, said: “We are very excited and grateful to have won the award.”
The Bishop of Norwich First Nature Award, for projects helping young people connect with the natural world, was run by the First Nature Campaign. The judges included a panel of young people, plus representatives of the Bishop of Norwich, Norfolk Wildlife Trust, Norfolk Museums Service’s Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse and the Broads Authority.
While at The Clare School Bishop Graham also officially opened the Clare School’s new mobility trail. The series of multi-sensory boards will help pupils find their way around independently. More than 100 panels display information using words, tactile pictures, the touch-reading systems braille and moon, and press-button sound. The only trail of its kind, it was designed and produced with the help of Norfolk company Production Bureau.
