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Blooming wonderful

Discover how a nursery garden can be much more than a little green space for a few plants, as Barbara Millar visits two innovative sites. Heather Gillies will cheerfully accept help from any quarter. In creating the award-winning garden at the Clutha Street Nursery, Glasgow, where she is head, Heather has roped in parents, staff's partners, local schools and community groups, the Prince's Trust, neighbouring businesses and the children themselves. But she pays the greatest tribute to her staff.

Heather Gillies will cheerfully accept help from any quarter. In creating the award-winning garden at the Clutha Street Nursery, Glasgow, where she is head, Heather has roped in parents, staff's partners, local schools and community groups, the Prince's Trust, neighbouring businesses and the children themselves. But she pays the greatest tribute to her staff.

'Without them, none of this would have been possible,' she says.

Located just a short walk from a traffic-choked main route into Glasgow and surrounded by dusty sandstone tenements, the nursery garden provides a welcome splash of colour to the neighbourhood.

Five years ago, when the hard work started, the grounds at the 50-place local authority nursery - once home to a tram depot canteen - consisted of nothing but a large stretch of grass and a plain concrete area.

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