A colourful arts project which used sunflowers to link Swanage with Durlston Country Park has been declared a great success.

Children from St Mark’s primary school, and volunteers from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Swanage, transplanted 750 sunflower seedlings into 150 hessian bags as part of The Arts Development Company’s work with Durlston Country Park.

The sunflower bags were placed by the side of the path from Herston to Durlston to guide people along the route, which is hard to follow in places.

The flowers were grown from seeds planted earlier in the year by every child at St Mark’s, along with people in the Herston area.

Cleo Evans, Artist and Arts and Environment Lead with The Arts Development Company, who came up with the idea, said: “We’ve received some lovely feedback and the project has been a great success.

“We’re very grateful to Eco Sustainable Solutions who donated the soil and coffee companies Lincoln & York and Masteroast who gave us the jute sacks for the sunflowers.

“As well as the sunflower trail, Eco also kindly donated enough soil for St Marks to have a new vegetable bed. Every class will now be involved in growing vegetables.

“It is great to work with such publicly minded companies, making life more fun and environmentally friendly.”

Charlotte Haswell, Business Account Holder, Eco Sustainable Solutions, added: “The sunflower trail was a fantastic community project and we were very pleased to play our part in its success.”