Children from Hanover Primary School got their hands dirty to help turn a stretch of canal-side waste ground into a patch of paradise.

On the first warm and sunny day of the year, 16 tonnes of soil was delivered to the land beside Regent’s Canal’s City Road Basin, in Islington,

Pupils, along with parents and teachers, helped lay the flower beds which will hopefully bloom into life in the coming months.

Amanda Reese, headteacher at the school, said: “The weather was absolutely fabulous and it was a great day.

“There were lots of volunteers and everyone was hard at work shovelling the soil that arrived on the barge.

“The patch of land was awful before, buy when all these flower bloom, which will hopefully be by the middle of spring, it will make such a difference to all the people who walk by this bit of the canal.