PARENTS of autistic children who use the unit based at St Andrew’s CofE Primary in Chinnor have described how the school’s planned sensory garden would help their children.

If the school wins the £7,500 of building work, it wants to create a spiritual garden which would appeal to pupils in the school’s Autistic Resource Base.

Kerith Bruce, whose nine-year-old son Murray goes to the unit, said: “This is a wonderful opportunity to try to cater for autistic children who have sensory problems.

“Often they find it difficult to cope with life. It would be a garden which would offer beautiful senses.”

Murray also has a condition called Pica, which gives him an abnormal appetite for flowers and plants. The family’s garden at home is entirely edible, and the planned sensory garden would be designed to engage youngsters’ tastes as well as their other senses.

Catherine Jones, whose son Thomas, seven, has severe autism, said: “He likes very tactile things, very visual things and also aural sensations like the whooshing of long grasses. A sensory garden engages all the senses, and it would be a very different sort of space than you would usually find in a school playground.”

  • To support today’s school, send a School Build SOS voucher to St Andrew’s CofE School, Station Road, Chinnor, OX39 4PU.