Green Grounds

Green Grounds is a project which encourages and supports schools to enrich their playgrounds as places to learn, play and encourage wildlife.

BFT works with local nursery, primary and secondary schools to develop and deliver environmental improvement projects in school grounds. These projects are designed by the pupils and the school community to provide educational, recreational and wildlife benefits. Green Grounds has a focus on improving the wildlife and biodiversity value of school grounds to that they can be used for curriculum work as well as for play and recreation.

This project is funded by the Scottish Natural Heritage School Grounds Grant Scheme. Through this grant scheme BFT are funded to support schools to develop and deliver projects and provide grants for school grounds projects.

The support available to schools includes

• working with the pupils to generate ideas and formalise plans
• assisting with sourcing funding and providing Scottish Natural Heritage grants
• supplying information on contractors and suppliers
• helping to carry out the practical work with pupils, parents, teachers and the local community

Examples of Green Grounds projects are wildlife and sensory gardens, outdoor classrooms, vegetable garden, woodland trails and hedge and tree planting activities. For a full list of Green grounds projects click here and look at this map to see the locations of Green Grounds projects in the Borders.

Fundamental to the success of the Green Grounds is to involve the children in the improvements as much as possible. By the pupils carrying out surveys of schools grounds, designing improvements, fundraising and carrying out some of the practical work, it is hoped that children will develop a sense of ownership and responsibility towards their environment and develop connections to the natural world.

In addition to assisting with environmental improvement projects BFT encourage greater use of playgrounds as educational resources and have assisted with the production of a number of educational resources for use in school grounds. BFT also support training to encourage greater curriculum use of school playgrounds.