Youngsters from Falmouth Primary Academy revelled in the chance to skip normal lessons and get covered in mud when they were invited down to Kimberley Park to help plant crocus bulbs.

The school was the last primary in the town to play its part in Falmouth Rotary Club's planting programme which has been carried out in support of Rotary International's End Polio Now campaign. Staff from the school joined Rotarians, community engagement officer, Jacqui Owen, and members of Falmouth Town Council's gardening team, to help the year three children plant the bulbs in a very muddy patch of land close to the park's main entrance.

The teams, armed with spades, dug holes and planted 2,000 bulbs which had been donated by the Rotary Club, who have been working in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society. It followed the planting programme which saw 15,000 bulbs buried in Queen Mary Gardens back in October.

The idea of the project is to create large patches of crocuses, which will all be purple. That colour was chosen as every time doctors vaccinate a child against polio they dye their finger purple to show they have been protected against the disease.