Using free and purchased hedging from the Woodland Trust, and made possible with additional funding from a successful Tesco Bags of Help grant, Granard Primary School has planted a new 50-meter hedge along the Westleigh Avenue side of the school. The Tesco Bags of Help grant has allowed the school to enrich the biodiversity of the outdoor school environment, and the hedge planting is only one of many initiatives in process as a result of their successful bid. 

This particular project involved combining the efforts of staff, children and Governors, as well as the generosity and digging power of the local charity GoodGym in order to make it happen. 

It was a tight time scale to get the plants in on time, so on the evening of Easter Monday approximately 20 members of the charity GoodGym Wandsworth ran to the school and spent 45 minutes digging a trench along Westleigh Avenue!  

Their work enabled the students to come back after the holidays and plant immediately.  It took nearly a week to plant over 300 new hedging saplings. The children are hugely excited to watch and observe their hard work over the next few years as the hedge grows. It is a green legacy of which they can be exceptionally proud. 

Granard is hugely appreciative of all the support from the local community in making this happen, and is looking forward to creating more opportunities for community participation and engagement.

Article supplied by Kim Humphreys