A hard-working team of apprentices from Ryebridge Construction are spending the Easter holidays creating a sensory garden at a Luton-based special needs school.
Woodlands Secondary School supports students aged 11-18 with severe learning difficulties or profound and multiple learning difficulties, many of whom also have additional complex needs including autistic spectrum disorder, epilepsy, physical or sensory impairments.
The sensory garden is the brainchild of teacher Selina Young, who was inspired by Luton’s flagship initiative Climate Action Teachers Champion (CATCh), which is aimed at helping teachers and local schools access resource and support in delivering and embracing sustainability.
CATCh has been specifically designed to help teachers embed climate change and sustainability within their learning programmes, and to help school leads and senior leadership to understand how they can access local resources, funding and support to help launch their school Climate Change Action Plan.
Selina worked with the school’s Eco Council on a vision for a sensory garden in the school grounds to provide a calm space to help students regulate away from the school environment.
The aim was to create a quiet, peaceful and pretty area incorporating elements which are visually appealing, smell nice and potentially even taste good as well.
But when she approached local companies for quotes to complete the groundworks, they came back with figures in the region of £4-5K, which was beyond the school’s budget, and the entire scheme faltered.
Fortunately a conversation with the school’s careers partner London Luton Airport put them in touch with Ryebridge, who agreed to carry out the work completely free of charge.
This week a team of apprentices from Ryebridge – supervised by project manager Don Wall - are transforming a corner of the school grounds into the garden.
Managing director Sean Scully said: “This is a fantastic project which was born out of a real passion and enthusiasm from Woodlands’ students, so we were determined to see it go ahead without any further delays.
“Our lads are glad to be working on such an inspirational initative, and I can’t wait to see the finished garden.”
Ryebridge apprentices working at Woodlands School.