DEVASTATED children at a West Harrow school are having to continually maintain a greenhouse built by hard working pupils – thanks to mindless vandals.

Bored teens are thought to be destroying the plastic bottle greenhouse and daubing it with ugly graffiti, meaning pupils at Vaughan Nursery First and Middle School have to keep returning to it to clean it up.

In November last year children had to rebuild it entirely when it was pulled down and after another spate of attacks on the greenhouse in the last few months teaching staff at the school have been forced to consider ways in which to protect the building.

One of the considerations is to place chicken wire around the greenhouse but Alison Fink, a teaching assistant at the school, thinks its a shame precautions should have to be made against vandals.

She said: “Maybe I'm living in a bit of an ideal world here but you would hope you wouldn't have to make provisions to stop people destroying the work of school children. The children are all obviously really disappointed because of the actions of a few, and that what essentially looks like barbed wire might have to be put on it to stop people destroying it.

“We always try to put a positive perspective on things for the pupils and unfortunately the only lesson that can be learnt from this is that they now understand the upset you can cause other people with your actions.”

Police confirmed that they had received a number of reports about criminal damage on the shared allotment site and revealed that West Harrow Safer Neighbourhood Team were set to meet with owners to discuss ways to prevent crime there in the future.

Pupils at the school are themselves set to return to the six foot by eight foot green house which sits in West Harrow Allotments in The Gardens, next to the school, for another rebuild later this month. It was originally built around 18 months ago after pupils collected 1,500 plastic bottles.

Having spent around nine months gathering the haul of bottles children at the middle school and some year 10s at Whitmore High School cut the tops and bottoms off the bottles to thread onto bamboo canes.

A two day effort ensured the project was completed and it was opened towards the end of June 2009.