On Friday June 20th, we held a small flag raising ceremony to celebrate having succeeded in attaining the 5th Green Flag for the theme “Biodiversity”. Biodiversity involves taking note of what we are doing and can do for our local environment to encourage the development of and sustain the existence of natural habitats.

Swinford Green School 5th Green Flag

To learn more about Biodiversity we went to Ballycroy National Park. We saw all kinds of creatures that are native to Ireland, particularly West of Ireland. We studied the insects in a freshwater pond to see how safe/polluted the water was.

Swinford national school 5th green flagLast October we planted over 500 bulbs with help from parents and grandparents. We also planted 6 heathers. This Spring our grounds were awash with colour and we were delighted with the outcome of this project. Hopefully we will plant more bulbs in October 2014. We have a small vegetable plot into which we planted flowering chives, marjoram, mint, Earl Grey and colourful daisies. We don’t intend to eat these vegetables- we know they are vegetables that attract bees and butterflies and this is what we want to do. We also placed some flat stones in this patch. The butterflies love to bask on these when they are warm and allow their wings to dry. We placed a tray with wet sand in the plot also as the butterflies love to sip the water from the sand while they scratch themselves in the sand.

Swinford national school 5th green flagFirst class set sunflower seeds in their classroom and when they were strong enough, they transplanted these outside. Now they are three feet tall, have flowerbuds on them but the petals are not out yet. They will attract lots of bees and butterflies also throughout the summer and early autumn.

Swinford national school 5th green flagWe made lots of bird feeders out of plastic bottles and sticks, put bird seed and peanuts in these and attached them to many of the trees in our school environment for the birds in the depths of winter.

 

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