Trees sponsored by
Principality

Planting day at the Primary Education Centre, Swansea

April 2008

When children at the Primary Education Centre in West Cross, Swansea took Professor David Bellamy on a tour of their school grounds, they could not have suspected that the renowned botanist would find some potentially rare and ancient apple trees in their garden.

Professor Bellamy was visiting the school to plant some new trees sponsored by Principality, Wales’ largest building society, when he spotted something unusual. He said, ‘Here is an interesting apple tree with very large flowers that could well be one of the old varieties. Looking around over all the walls there are lots of apple trees around here – the school could well have been built on an old orchard from many years ago. When these trees make apples in the summer, then we’ll be able to send them off to see whether they really are an old variety, which will be really exciting.’

From here the morning only got more exciting as the children got stuck in to planting their new trees, followed by watering, measuring and singing Happy Birthday to them!

Pupil Davy said, ‘It was good. The best thing was to find out that we have so many plants in our garden. We learned lots of things about trees.’

Surveying the new trees at the front of the school, headteacher Lesley Williams said, ‘We had a wonderful morning. Thank you very much. And thanks very much to Principality. All our children have behavioural problems but they were so inspired we had no problems at all with behaviour, all the children thoroughly enjoyed it. It certainly opened our eyes to a lot of wonderful outdoor experiences.’

014 019 031 034 077 083 094 101 101b 112 122 136 146 154 164 171 175 178 215 224 html lightbox jquery by VisualLightBox.com v6.0m