A MULTI sensory garden opened last year at a school has won praise from judges of an annual floral competition.

While showing judges from Northumbria in Bloom round Middleton in Teesdale, Coun Madeleine Sutcliffe took them to see the primary school's sensory garden, which was the brainchild of former headteacher Michael Harris, who retired last summer.

"They were over the moon with it and said it must enter the competition," said Coun Sutcliffe.

A keen gardener, Mr Harris viewed 200 gardens in Holland, France and the UK in his quest for ideas. The five senses - sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell - are all explored in the plot, which is to the left of the school's main entrance, and is used as an open air classroom.

Pupils drew designs for the garden and came up with ideas. The school art club took a particular interest and made many of the ceramics on show, including birds in chimney pots. Fairly conventional fruit, vegetables, herbs and water features sit alongside some wonderfully innovative ideas. Blue chippings form a "riverbed" complete with a crocodile, hippopotamus and fish, and a lawn is edged with upturned, colourful wellingtons which the pupils have grown out of.

The school's emblem, the blue gentian, is engraved on a large, stone slab, and its motto, Many Hearts Make a School, decorates another.

Four boys who put a lot of effort in, much of it in their spare time, are Stephen Peart, Daniel McLaughlin, Steven Dickenson and Sam Butterfield, whose father is a builder and has helped in creating the garden.

Staff and pupils were encouraged by the judges' comments but say they are still making up their minds as to whether to enter the Northumbria in Bloom contest.