ECO Work in the Garden - Sep 2010

Personalize a photo album

Well who would have thought the garden would have looked this good! When we first started out just a few months ago we had very few insects in the school garden. We now have so many plants growing that each time we are out we spot more insects, or different ones from last time. This is really pleasing our P1/2 and P2 as their ECO action is to increase biodiversity in the school grounds. They have spent structured time out in the garden as part of lessons as well as their break time when they could explore the garden with friends from different classes, passing on what they had learned and found. Have a look at our slideshow to see us in action. We know that we are making a difference by working as one big team as we now find it hard to count the number of living things we see in our garden. There are just too many to keep up with but we'll still continue our hard work!

Picnic Weather in June

This slideshow generated with Smilebox

The month of June was beautiful and warm so the Garden Club decided to take full advantage of the weather.  After some end of year tidying, we had a picnic in the garden at our last meeting of the school year.  Some of our members were already away on holiday or in rehearsing for the school show that took place that night so we had a few missing members ..... but that didn't mean any food went to waste!  We had managed to secure a donation of plants from the Paisley Freegle website, a free way to recyle unwanted belongings.  We had a chat about where to plant these whilst we ate and worked out what we thought would grow best.  At the end we tidied our gardening equipment away for the summer holidays with the worry that when the school was closed our plants might die in the heat.  Luckily for the plants it rained for most of the summer so all of them grew amazingly well!

Our School Garden in May 2010

Free slideshow made with Smilebox

We got together a dedicated bunch of volunteers who wished to do extra work in the school garden. We call ourselves the "St. Fillan's Gardening Club" and we meet every Monday after school. We have 7 raised beds in the school grounds and 7 large half-barrels. In May we gave 2 of our beds a makeover and tidied some of the others. We brightened up our half-barrels too with bright bedding plants. We bought them this year but next year Mrs Nicholson is going to challenge each class to grow some from seed. Bridge of Weir Horticultural Society kindly donated packets of seeds to us at their Flower Show. This will give us a great choice for next year.  We received a £50 micro-grant from  "Action Earth" which we used to establish a new rockery to celebrate 2010, the Year of Biodiversity.

Come Rain Or Shine!

>

Sometimes we have to go out and do jobs round the garden but unfortunately we have no control over the weather.  Sometimes we are able to indoor jobs however often our garden club members choose to go outdoors, despite the horrible weather.  We've had fun in the rain and it's amazing to see how quickly one part of the school garden floods.  This is something we will have to work around - perhaps a bog garden at a future date?  Here we are out securing the rain catchers which had become loose.  We use this water first when watering our plants.  This is all part of our ECO work.

School Garden - April 2010

We spent a lot of time weeding the beds and pulling out old veg which had been left in the ground from last year. We don't have quite enough compost so over the coming year we hope to have all the beds fully filled and up and running. Keep checking back to see what we've been up to.