AL FRESCO lessons in healthy living have led to green-fingered pupils winning a national award.

Dane Ghyll Primary, Barrow, bagged a prize from the Total Green School Awards for their hard work and passion in cultivating the perfect vegetable garden.

Pupils won the £250 prize money after staff sent off a diary packed full of snaps showing the hard work they had put in to growing their greens.

School gardener Louise Postlethwaite was thrilled by the recognition. She said: "I am extremely proud.

"I just love the children, they are brilliant and always want to help, even when it is their play time.

"They see the garden as a nice thing and not a chore, they want to spend their time on it."

Mrs Postlethwaite has been working on the garden for more than seven years and she and the pupils transformed the site from only a few raised planting beds into a beautiful garden with a sensory area, rose garden, strawberry beds, greenhouse and a polytunnel.

The school now produces a range of vegetables including potatoes, cabbages, courgettes, peas and carrots, as well as fruit.

Pupils take responsibility for the produce, planting and watering seeds as well as picking them when ripe.

Cooking the produce has proved popular with pupils keen to sample strawberry jam made from their own berries.

Mrs Postlethwaite added: "We are hoping to expand in the future but we have a lot to look after now. It's a continuing cycle but the kids are always desperate to help."