A garden grows where one goal used to stand

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

By eight o’clock, the old goal had been unbolted from the school’s lower playground. Its metal feet left four dark holes in the concrete. Nearby, workers dragged wooden planters across the yard with a long scrape, while trays of mint and lavender waited beside a stack of bright green benches.

The changes are part of the school’s plan to turn half of the lower playground into a lunchtime garden. The other half will remain available for ball games, and a larger sports court will still be open at the opposite end of the school grounds.

Headteacher Rina Patel described the old yard as “a grey square that taught nobody anything”. She said the garden would provide shade, outdoor seating and space for pupils to grow vegetables for cookery lessons.

“We are not taking play away,” she said. “We are making room for more kinds of it. Some pupils want to run, but others want somewhere to talk, read or simply breathe.”

Not everyone is convinced. Leo Marsh, a pupil who uses the lower playground for football, watched the work from behind the temporary fence.

“If people want quiet, there is already a library,” he said. “They have planted peace and dug up our lunch break. Half a pitch means twice as many arguments over who gets to use it.”

His complaint is not shared by every pupil. In a school survey, 312 pupils responded: 204 wanted more seating and planted areas, 61 wanted the sports space to remain unchanged and 47 had no preference.

Parent Asha Begum welcomed the project. Her daughter had often avoided the playground because she disliked the noise and fast-moving footballs.

“She used to spend lunchtime standing against a corridor wall,” Begum said. “A school should not call a space successful just because the loudest children enjoy it.”

The school caretaker, Martin Cole, offered a more cautious view. He praised the pupil gardening group but pointed towards the rows of young plants.

“It will be lovely if people care for it,” he said. “But plants do not look after themselves. In hot weather, somebody must water them, and in autumn those leaves will have to be cleared before they become slippery.”

The garden opened for its first lunchtime at the end of the week. Several pupils crowded around the herb beds, while a football match continued on the remaining court. When a stray ball rolled towards the mint, one of the players ran after it and lifted it away before any stems were crushed.