Pastures Primary School, Leicester.

Pastures primary school in Leicester is celebrating it's 20th anniversary and I was invited along this year as part of the celebrations to make an outdoor classroom for the children within the school grounds!

The week before half term, we got busy with some living willow and planted out a whopping 5 meter diameter structure with the children. The living willow will (as you can see in the pictures) is/will sprout some lovely green leaves to help shelter from the sun and light rain.

Inside it we installed some very strong fresh green oak seating and under that some recycled rubber flooring, to make sure there would be no soggy shoes and socks!

It was an absolute pleasure working with this unique school whom whilst we were working with them, they adopted 11 rescue hens, 1 for each class, they (the chickens!) have a very handsome house, see the image at the bottom, and they're producing super local free range eggs for the parents! Very inspiring... Keep up the good work :)

The Boston Hakusan friendship garden in the Giles school, Boston, Lincolnshire.

This was a wonderful project I started with my friend and colleague Peter Wood in March this year for the Giles school in Boston, Lincolnshire.
They have an exceptional Art Department who had the vision for this beautiful Japanese garden which all importantly had living willow as part of the structure.

The garden with finished structures, just waiting for the living willow to take hold..

Just a few months later, the willow has rooted and introduced lots of lovely greenery to the garden, a splendid sight to behold!

The garden was unveiled in July by the Mayor of Boston, Councillor Peter Bedford and Japanese exchange students from Hakusan City - who were incidentally brilliant at weaving willow, despite my very poor grasp of the Japanese language!