A BRAVE parent and teacher jumped out of a plane from a height of 58,000ft to raise hundreds of pounds to restore a nursery garden area.

Watership Downs Nursery School, in Downs Road, Maldon, has this week completed a £1,600 renovation of its garden.

A team of eight workers and volunteers dedicated their Easter holidays to overhauling the green space to make it more accessible to their children.

More than half of the funds for the project were raised by Nicola Torrie, who has two children at the nursery, and nursery deputy Tracey Gibson, who took to the skies last month with a sponsored sky-dive from 58,000ft in East Anglia.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

The brave duo raised £821 from the dive, with an additional £1,000 given to the nursery by Maldon’s Tesco Extra through their carrier bag grant scheme. The £221 left over will go to other nursery projects.

Nursery Manager Sharon Kennedy said the revamp was to help make the area friendlier to those with special needs.

She said: “Nicola wanted to raise funds to help level the garden area to make it more accessibility to all children, but specifically for her son Danny who has Achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism.

“Before the revamp the area was quite uneven with a lot of steps, making it harder for Danny to get down to it. Plus it was looking a little old and worse for wear, but now it’s been given some new life.

“We managed to turn it all around during the Easter break. It was stressful at times and we only just put the finishing touches to it on Monday, but we got there, it looks great, and the team should be very proud.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

“Nicola and my deputy Tracey were so brave in doing the sky dive, they worked extremely hard with the fundraising. They had to wait several hours on the day before conditions were good.

“They were extremely nervous, but now they said they’d happily do it again.”

The nursery has been in Maldon for 36 years, and has 46 pupils on the register.

Sharon added: “It’s been amazing and the response from everyone was so positive.

“The children will all benefit from the new area and we all wish to express deep gratitude to all who helped, whether it be physically helping to move sand, purchasing raffle tickets, sponsoring the sky dive or actually jumping out of the plane!”