The School Garden
In the summer of 2009 we decided to build a school garden. We thought that the best way to involve all classes would be to make plots for each class level. Where would we put it?
After much thought we decided on the embankment at the side of the school. Mary Lillis and her team built the plots for all the classes and we harvested our first crop of vegetables in the spring of 2010. With the help of Mark Collins and Mary Lillis the children set up a market garden in the Infant Courtyard every autumn and parents can come and buy the fresh organic produce straight from our school garden!
Recently, when Minister of Education, Jan O’Sullivan, came to raise our sixth Green Flag, the children presented her with a big hamper of organic vegetables, potatoes, turnips, squash, cabbage, pumpkins, scallions, onions and lots more, all of which came from straight from our school garden.
In 2011, as part of our Green Flag programme for Bio-Diversity, we installed a Bird-Feeder outside each classroom window, and each classroom got a bird identification chart to quickly identify each bird that visits the table. A CCTV camera was installed into the Bird Watch House at the back of the school and every spring we can watch a new Bird Family move in and rear a family! The Wildlife Area, at the side of the gym, was developed in the spring of 2012 for explorations in biodiversity. Our Wildlife Area contains wild flowers, native trees, a log pile, butterfly, ladybird and bat boxes.