Our School Grounds: Maintenance


Suitable for:
Teacher

Maintaining your School Grounds Developments:

Maintaining your developments should be thought about as you plan your scheme.

Planning for maintenance could be the difference between a sprawling garden space that becomes unmanageable and the development of well thought out raised beds that are colourful & productive all year round.

Consider maintenance of your planned developments from a whole school perspective:

See the example Maintenance Plan to help understand what and when different types of maintenance will need to happen.

See the page Making your Development Happen – Here we have highlighted how through existing groups and structures in your school you can allow ownership and time in school to be planned to look after certain developments.

Maintenance Made Easy:

Download the Yearly Maintenance Planner and schedule in when different work needs to be done.

Start small – Grow big

Develop a few things at a time depending on the support and capacity you have to maintain them in the future.  For example, one amazing raised bed will lead to wider support than lots of ideas that are executed poorly,  enabling you to expand gradually over time.

Plant Smart

Use our plant selection cards to help with your choices. These include perennial plants (that grow back each year) bulbs , self seeding plants (forget me knots, asters) and evergreen shrubbery – heathers & hebes.

Get the right soil

Watering can be your biggest on-going task. Fill your planters, pots and raised beds with at least 50% top soil and 50% organic matter – compost, manure. In the winter add more manure or grow green manures to dig in and improve the nutrient content and water retention of your soil.
Adding straw, manure, bark chip or stones on the surface of your raised beds, planters and borders will also help retain moisture and reduce weed growth.

Yearly Maintenance Chart
pdf (229.43 KB)
Working with your Local Authority
pdf (4.15 MB)
Gettting Parents involved
pdf (169.20 KB)