Episode description

If you added up all the land currently forming playgrounds and playing fields around Scotland’s schools, it would be roughly the same size as Dundee. Most of that is tarmac or grass cut short for sports but as Helen Needham discovered when she visited Levenmouth High School in Buckhaven in Fife, it’s possible for schools to use some of their land in a different way to improve biodiversity and benefit learning and wellbeing.

Two rare needlework samplers thought to have been embroidered by Robert Burns’s sister and mother have been returned to the poet’s birthplace thanks to an American donor. Rachel visited the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway to have a look at the samplers and hear about their significance.

Bird Gardens Scotland is a bird conservation breeding centre and home to over 300 birds from around the world. It’s been built over the past few years by Owen and his husband Mark and now boasts a coffee shop and visitor centre. Mark went for a walk around the sit and met some of the hundreds of feathered residents.

A few years ago, an area of grassy scrub came into community ownership near Crail. The community decided to turn the site into an area that would benefit nature and the environment. Rachel went to see how the work was going and hear about the plans for the site.

Mark is in the Borders, chatting to two members of the Campaign for a Scottish Borders National Park group. They tell him why their area should be awarded national park status and why lack of council support isn’t holding them back.

While she was at Levenmouth High School, Helen Needham heard from teacher Duncan Zuill about their failed attempts at planting trees. One of their problems is deer, but as Duncan told Helen, they also don’t want to use plastic tree tubes. George Anderson from Woodland Trust Scotland joins us live to tell us why the tubes are needed, and what the plastic free alternatives are.

Rachel meets two Newfoundland dogs, Cindy and Yogi, who are trained to help rescue people who get into difficulty in the sea. Their owner Norman tells Rachel about the background to dogs working as rescue animals and how he trains them.