Vandals torch eco-friendly greenhouse built by pupils

Teachers and children at Hillwood Primary School, in Ratho Station, have been left devastated after they found the greenhouse, made from 1400 plastic bottles that the schoolchildren had collected, had been burned to the ground.

The greenhouse was intended to grow plants and teach the children about agriculture and sustainable living.

However, in the early hours of Sunday morning vandals broke into the school playground and quickly destroyed all their hard work.

Principal teacher Marion Purdie said: "Everybody at the school is devastated. The children are upset and understandably cross that somebody would come into their playground and damage the greenhouse, particularly because they were so involved in its construction. The staff are really annoyed as well because a lot of work had gone into it.

"We had plans to use it over the year to teach the children about eco-awareness, but now it's all gone."

Most of the bottles that made up the body of the greenhouse had completely melted, leaving behind only a charred skeleton.

An area of playground around the greenhouse was also badly charred, but the structure was far enough away from the school itself to prevent the fire spreading into the building.

Ms Purdie said it was not the first time school property had been vandalised this year.

She added: "We had a lovely outdoor area, which we put a lot of time and money into, which was vandalised shortly after the start of term.

"Vandals damaged the frame of a gazebo we had standing in the area, rendering it unsafe for use by the children and robbing them of the full benefit of the outdoor area.

"This is the first time there has been total destruction though. The police have been informed and they're now investigating it, but as far as I'm aware they've made no progress towards discovering who was responsible for it."

Earlier this year, the Evening News revealed that vandals had caused almost 600,000 of damage to Edinburgh schools over the previous five years.

While Hillwood Primary School was far from being the worst hit, it emerged that the school had suffered nearly 2000 worth of damage in the years leading up to the middle of last term.