By Duncan Bick

Last updated at 14:42, Friday, 16 November 2012

A secondary school is going to get a new nursery – but it won’t be one for children to attend.

Instead, it’s going to be somewhere where pupils will put their gardening skills to use preparing something for their local community.

The youngsters, who attend William Howard School in Brampton, will be growing trees in their school grounds.

Once they have begun to mature, these will be given out to people in the town and the surrounding rural areas.

Louise Lewis, the school’s open space assistant co-ordinator, said the pupils are preparing its eco-garden now for the trees to be planted next year.

“It’s something that has been in the pipeline for a while,” she added.

About 50 trees will be planted in February.

These are being shipped to Brampton from Sweden but are all species that are normally found in the UK.

Ms Lewis was keen to point out none of these will be ash trees.

The youngsters will then plant them in the eco-garden and tend to them for two growing seasons.

After this, they will then look for suitable places outside of school for them to be planted.

This is part of a scheme called the School Tree Nursery Programme.

It is run under the auspices of the Earth Restoration Service, an environmental charity.

The group aims to teach children about the environment and help develop work that schools are already doing in this subject area.

“Particularly with areas of land being taken for house building and just the general state of the areas I think it is a really good lesson for the kids,” said Ms Lewis.

Ms Lewis does not think they will need a lot of attention from the school pupils.

“Once they are in the ground, they pretty much take care of themselves.”

She also believes that William Howard School is one of the first schools in Cumbria to take part in the scheme.

First published at 14:13, Friday, 16 November 2012
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk