St Luke’s Community Nature Garden was officially opened this week by the Royal Borough’s Deputy Mayor, Cllr Siân Martin, along with pupils from St Luke’s CofE Primary School.
The £15,000 garden – which is funded by an external public health grant - has been specially designed to create a welcoming and relaxing space for residents to enjoy and for local school children to use as an interactive green classroom.
The garden has been built using only sustainable materials featuring pebble and basket seating, raised planters, a log bridge, stepping logs plus two bug hotels giving insects a safe place to rest, breed, and hibernate, especially during winter months.
Pupils from St Luke’s helped with the garden’s final planting, and the school has now formed a gardening club for the children to care for the plants and learn how the insects living in the bug hotels encourage biodiversity.
Deputy Mayor of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Cllr Siân Martin, said, “An underused urban corner is now a pretty and calming space for the whole community to relax in and enjoy.
“And it also gives local children their very own interactive classroom to experience first-hand how to care for plants, the importance of nature, and see for themselves how insects help keep the environment healthy.”
Local volunteers from Good Gym and Calibra Tree Surgeons initially cleared the site and build the new garden with Bowers Facilities now taking on its larger ongoing maintenance.
The garden’s creation is part of the council’s public health externally funded £50,000 Healthy Streets Project which also built the new nearby Rain Gardens at the entrances to Norfolk Park. These have eye-catching planting and natural drainage systems to help stop surface water from gathering.