Our children were attracted to the top corner of our courtyard even though it was not a very interesting area of the nursery. (Could it have been because it was as far away from the staff as they could possibly get?). So we decided to create a rockery there to brighten up the area.
This presented us with the problem of finding the soil, stones and other materials needed on our limited budget. By chance, one of the children's uncles had a business laying driveways and had just dug up three in quick succession. He delivered a small lorry-load of soil outside our perimeter fence, and parents volunteered one Saturday to carry everything into the courtyard.
They planted pampas grass, a clematis, a climbing rose and a selection of smaller plants. It was a bit sparse, but we were confident that in time it would thrive and look great - which it did.
However, the pampas grass grew out of control. Bad weather meant that weeding was neglected, and because the rockery was in the far corner of the courtyard we found it was easy to 'forget' about tending it.
The following year some parents volunteered to redo it. They dug out a circle about 2.5m in diameter in front of the original rockery. They laid little paths with small stones and bark - great for keeping maintenance to a minimum. And this time we made sure the area was well maintained.
By now the whole courtyard needed a constant maintenance, so we instigated a daily routine where the children took turns to help with weeding and watering the plants. We found that some children asked their parents to take them to nursery early so that they could get a turn at watering the plants, and there were often tears in the late afternoon if a parent arrived too early and a child missed their turn at doing the evening watering.
