Mary's Garden
A hidden gem of a nature area.
Wildflowers, ponds, apple trees, and bug nooks and crannies — funded by the school and the PTA. A place to read. A place for nature clubs.
The garden
A nature corner with room to wander.
At the front of the school, Mary's Garden is the quiet counterweight to the field — a small wild place full of plants, ponds, and apple trees.
The garden was funded by the school and the PTA, and it's quietly become one of the spaces that defines what Swiss Gardens feels like: a school that takes nature seriously and gives children room to look at it up close.
A place to read. A place for nature clubs. A place to slow down between lessons and notice what's growing.
The garden is part of our wider eco work. Read about our eco team and our Gold award on the Eco page.
Inside the garden
What's in it.
A small list of the things that grow, live, and happen in Mary's Garden through the year.
- Wildflowers — left to seed and re-seed across the seasons
- Ponds — for frogs, for pond-dipping, for looking
- Apple trees — fruiting in late summer
- Bug nooks and crannies — for the smallest residents
- Plants and planters — looked after by parent volunteers with the eco team
- A place to read — benches and quiet corners
- A home for nature clubs — looking, listening, learning
In motion
A garden that's also a classroom.
Some lessons are best taught in the place itself. Mary's Garden is where teachers bring children to look closely, pick carefully, and make something with what's growing.
One morning in May this year, a class spent a session in the garden doing hapa zome — a Japanese printmaking technique that draws natural dye from leaves and flowers pressed onto fabric. Picking, pressing, looking at the colour each plant left behind.
It's the kind of thing the garden is for: a real lesson, in a real place, with the materials growing around you.
Come and see the garden.
The garden is small, and the best way to understand it is to be in it. Open mornings include a walk through Mary's Garden; you can also book a one-to-one tour.