After searching online for soil, we came to the conclusion that the cost of under-soil was far greater than we had planned so had to look for an alternative that was cheaper or even free. We searched on Gumtree and came across a freebies section. Luckily we found a man on there, who was having an extension, and he had 9 tonnes of soil that needed to be cleared for free. We enquired about picking up the soil. He was willing for us to pick up the soil anytime that suited us, so we arranged a date and time that was convenient for all of us. Roberto and Harvey jumped in their cars with 20 empty bags, kindly donated to us by Harvey’s dad, to collect the soil from a town nearby.
Once we reached the kind gentleman’s house he was extremely willing to help us load the soil into our cars and hear all about our project. With around 100kg of soil in each of our boots, we thanked the gentlemen and drove off home.
With bags and bags of soil taking up all of the space in the back of our cars, we headed down to the school to drop it off and finish preparing the area for when we order the pergola and sleepers. We arrived at the school nice and early so that we could have as much time as we needed to completely clear the area before darkness set. We (mainly Harvey) started raking the leaves of the area however, whilst we were doing this, we discussed whether or not to turn the soil over as we didn’t want to make the ground too uneven. We concluded that it would best if we cleared the remaining grass and try to flatten the area as much as we could.
Whilst we were doing this, there was constant talk about how we could use the soil that we gathered from last week, in order to give us more soil for the sleepers. After a discussion we decided to sieve out all the raked leaves, and use the soil that was left over.
The school SENCO also spoke to us in more detail about the inclusion of pupils in our project. We all thought that this would be a fantastic idea because we wanted the children to make the project and the area their own. We therefore agreed that the pupils, led by the SENCO, could help design and create the bugs hotel that will be placed behind the shed.
After we had finished sieving the soil, we then started to measure out the sizing for the sleepers and pergola so that we could go ahead and order them in preparation for next week. We then agreed on how big the pergola should be and placed markers in the ground. We looked at the size of the flowerbeds in the area next to ours, so we could get an idea of what size we would need to make it. We came to the conclusion that the flowerbed will be around 80cm in depth and two sleepers high, therefore we needed ten but we planned to order two additional sleepers as spare. Once this was all clarified we made a few phone calls and everything was ordered ready for next week. Finally our plans were turning into reality.