In the six years since it was founded, the gardening club at St Brides Major Church in Wales Primary School has built up a pretty impressive curriculum vitae. It has been the best kept school in the Vale of Glamorgan for two years running, was awarded Eco School status last year, and is now the national winner of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Greenfingers Challenge.

These and other accolades are proudly displayed in the school foyer, with recent copies of the club’s colourful newsletter, next to a door marked “Gardening club headquarters”, also known as Clare Revera’s office.

Clare came to the school on her teacher training placement six years ago and has been here ever since. She had to set up a club as part of her training course requirements and gardening was the obvious choice. “I had always gardened with my children, so it seemed the natural thing to do.”

To begin with the club consisted of Clare and a few children “pottering about planting bulbs”. But each year more and more children became involved to the point where today around 60 of the 159 children are members of the lunchtime club - and every child in the school has planted something in the school grounds.

The school sits on a large rectangular site in a shallow valley in the village of St Brides Major, just outside the town of Bridgend and a couple of kilometres from the South Wales coast. It’s a windy spot and the soil is heavy clay, but on all sides the ground has gradually been adapted to provide a variety of different gardens. Laminated signs, which have been sponsored by a local company, explain the history and purpose of each garden, but the children themselves are enthusiastic and knowledgeable guides.

Eleven-year-old Gemma and 10-year-old Naomi look after the butterfly garden by the school gates. They can tell you everything that’s growing in it, from the hebe and lavender to buddleia and evening primrose, and they know it is the colour or scent of these plants that attract butterflies and moths. Each of the school’s gardens has its own small team of monitors who take responsibility for the daily care of their patch, something which has had unexpected benefits elsewhere. “All their parents say it spills over into their home life - it’s as if they suddenly grow up overnight,” says Clare.

Year 6 pupils Rhys Williams, Rhys Diamond, Peter Komor and Alex Evans act as head gardeners, and have seen the garden grow up in the time they have been at the school. The steep slope running along one side of the school playing field has been left unmown for the past five years and is now the school’s designated nature reserve. They talk excitedly of fox sightings, the lady’s bed straw that grows wild (“they used to use it to stuff pillows!”) and the pipistrelle and brown long-eared bats that frequent the bat boxes nailed high in the trees.

No garden looks at its best in the autumn, but at St Brides Major the last flourishes of summer are giving way to preparations for next year. The Mediterranean garden along a south-facing wall is overflowing with hardy sun-loving plants, such as rosemary, oregano and oleander. The Easter garden beside it boasts pampas grass, palms and passion flowers, as well as a rockery cave that reflects the religious affiliation of this Church of Wales school. Elsewhere, the children have been piling well-rotted manure on to the vegetable beds (watched over by scarecrows Bride and Major), to ensure a good crop next season, clearing bedding plants from the jubilee garden by the school gates, and consigning old plants to the compost heaps and wormeries.

The newest and most impressive part of the school grounds is a sensory garden - an elongated design in the shape of a Celtic knot, which has paths that weave between plants selected for their touch, taste, appearance, sound and scent. The arrival of a visually impaired child at the school inspired the garden’s creation, but its combination of spiky palms, next to velvety leaved shrubs, sweet fennel mixing with bitter lovage and wind chimes over rustling grasses has enchanted all the children.

Much of the money for the development of the garden has been raised through grants and awards. Alan Titchmarsh donated pound;400 towards the sensory garden from his Gardens for Schools scheme, and the Greenfingers prize of pound;1,500 will go towards the creation of willow mazes and classes for the children in how to weave it.

Relatives, friends and neighbours from the village are all involved, some of them taking part in the gardening evenings in the summer months. Children excitedly recount tales of the open day when the queue of visitors stretched down the road and they had to stay open an hour longer than planned so everyone could get in. Clare says they are “especially proud” of the school’s newly earned Eco School status, marked by a green and white flag that flutters over the single-storey building. To win it, they had to show a commitment to recycling which, in addition to the usual cans and plastic stored in its recycling shed, included managing to salvage an incredible 898 Yellow Pages directories.

“Some of the children spend all their spare time in the gardens. In the summer they really get into it,” says Clare. Out of nearly 1,000 entries to the Greenfingers Challenge, she thinks it was “the involvement of the children that won it for us.” The judges agreed, saying they were “heartened by the commitment and enthusiasm of all concerned”. Hard work and loving care will always show in a garden and at St Brides Major there’s no mistaking or faking it.