MANAGEMENT staff from a local supermarket traded trolleys for trowels at a Mill Hill School for Mitzvah Day.

Seven staff members from the Waitrose supermarket in Brent Cross volunteered their time to help construct a World War II garden at Sunnyfields Primary School yesterday.

The gardening working day was part of a Royal Horticultural Society initiative, Get Your Grown-ups Growing and was held in conjunction with Mitzvah Day, an annual Jewish good deeds day.

Teacher Jo Connolly initiated the project, which includes the building of an Anderson shelter and garden bed allotments to complement studies on WWII.

Volunteers cleared the garden area, filled and distributed sandbags for the shelter and donated vouchers for the purchase of bulbs to be planted by the students.

Ann Richards, a teacher at the school, worked on the garden with the volunteers yesterday and said: "They worked like trojans, they worked really hard and completely cleared the area ready for the children to plant.

"It is a great way of developing community cohesion, these big corporations are willing to donate their manpower and come and help us in projects like this."

The next step for the garden will be to install a picket fence around the area.

A working party with parents and friends of the school will be held this Friday to complete other work around the schoolyard.