At last, today (Saturday 6th May) was the long awaited start to the Avanti House Primary School sensory garden. Following FOAH’s success with the Tesco Bags of Help scheme, awarding the school an amazing £12,000 towards creating a stimulating and original outdoor area, volunteers banded together this morning (at extremely short notice due to access issues) to commence work on the school pond.

The day was full of digging and scraping, levelling and measuring, lifting and moving, much sweat but thankfully, no tears. The end result was an expanded dug out ‘figure of 8’ pond area, measuring 5m x 3.5m, and a beautifully decked and thoughtfully constructed viewing platform and safety fence. Check out the Pictures!

With the bulk of the groundwork out of the way, we hope to get the lining fitted and pond filled very soon, perhaps in the next week or two.

Big thanks to Euroken for donating the materials today, to 888Dynamic for their tools & muscle power, and to all the volunteers and supporters who are giving up their free time and efforts to make the sensory garden a reality.

Special mention today to Gitesh, Roy, Hemang, Yogi, Gaurang, Jay, Unmesh, Dharmen, Priya, Prakash, Sanjay and Sharla. Well done team!

We are continually looking for more help, as many hands make light work, especially for a project of this scale. Please do get in touch with FOAH if you would like to participate in the next garden weekend, or are able to contribute in terms of materials or sponsorship.

We will keep you informed of the next garden date as soon as we have confirmation from the school, and hope to see you there.