Bank’s challenge to build garden in a day for Mile End’s Bonner School

A garden and outdoor learning area has been laid out in a day at a school in London’s East End after a challenge to bank workers.

Staff at Royal Bank of Scotland were thrown the gauntlet by Splash Community Projects to see if they could put the bank’s money where their mouth is!

A team of three specialist builders and 45 RBS staff completed the daunting task in a single day yesterday at Mile End’s Bonner Primary – the second project of its kind for the school.

The new outdoor learning and teaching resource has decking, pergolas, planters and other garden features. It follows the construction of a similar facility last year at the school’s other site at Bethnal Green.

Parents were invited to view the project at the end of the day, after a film crew had recorded the progress.

“These projects are literally ground-breaking,” Bonner Mile End’s science coordinator Tiffany Landamore said.

“Children learn about plant science, gardening, natural history and the environment in a safe, hands-on manner.

“The cross-curricular teaching and learning possibilities from our new garden, once fully planted-up, are simply endless.”

Bonner has spent two years rewriting its curriculum, now based on “skills and topics combining the best of traditional teaching with modern ideas inspiration”.

The volunteers were helping the school’s curriculum to “cultivate articulate and well-mannered youngsters to go on to lead successful lives and influence others to do the same”.

The two school sites which have one head teacher, Martin Tune, share systems and training with the same ethos.