A SCHOOL in Liphook has secured a grant to support one of its many environmental projects.

Highfield and Brookham Schools has been helped in its ongoing environmental quest thanks to a £4,250 grant from the South Downs National Park Trust as part of its Bee Lines scheme, which aims to protect, nurture and support our busy pollinators.

The school, which sits in 175-acre grounds on the rural borders of Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey, will use the cash to extend its wildflower-planting project.

Jasper Marks, the grounds manager who made the grant application on behalf of the school, has already earmarked two areas of the school’s golf course, around the artificial hockey pitch and the Lime Avenue pathway as the latest sites to be planted with wildflowers.

The grant comes just four months after Highfield and Brookham pupils sowed wildflower seeds across the site to mark Earth Day, with the primary aim of giving a helping hand to our prized but threatened pollinators – bees and butterflies.

The school has made a strong commitment to the environment, with regular green activities undertaken by pupils, such as building hibernaculums for wildlife and growing their own vegetables, dovetailing with the school’s ongoing eco programme, which is underpinned by its impressive biomass boilers which provide 85 per cent of its heating and energy needs.

Highfield Head Suzannah Cryer said: “We are immensely proud of our ongoing environmental work but we know that there is so much more work to do.

"This wonderful grant from the South Downs National Park Trust is another step in the right direction and soon legions of butterflies and bees will be able to take advantage of a special little wildlife haven set aside just for them.”