We spent a little while thinking of ways to get the children to look more closely at the tree - maybe having some small cuttings in vases, using magnifying glasses, and so on. The school is close to a thunderous road leading to the London docklands and Canary Wharf, yet there are also many small green spaces, canals and some beautiful mature trees which can go unnoticed by children and adults.
It was a great project after the Second World War, replacing the dirty and gloomy houses and schools of the East End with light, glassy buildings built around garden courtyards, often planted with lovely trees. As with many great projects, it is easier now to see the failures, than to appreciate the successes. Patches of dog-roamed, dirty grass in the middle of blocks of flats no longer look nice: practically everyone prefers the newly-prettified Victorian terraces.
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