School Garden

We have had great fun in our school garden all year. We took the Biodiversity in Schools Pollinator Pledge. We Learned about Biodiversity, Pollinators, Sustainability, Food Security and growing our own fruit and vegetables. We spent a lot of time in our school garden and have made a huge effort this year to raise awareness about the importance of bees and pollination and food security.

We had a Save the Bees Campaign in the school. Children created projects, art work, poetry and songs. We celebrated World Bee Day and Biodiversity Week. We invited speakers into our school from Junior Achievement Ireland, GOAL Changemakers, Biodiversity in Schools, Heritage in Schools, Coillte, GLOBE Ireland, Dublin City Council, Composting for Schools Initiative, local Beekeepers and members of our local Tidy Towns to share their knowledge and expertise and provide opportunities to bring our learning outdoors to take meaningful actions to support pollinators.

We have also worked hard to provide habitats and food for pollinators on our school grounds. We have installed a variety of Bee Hotels, Bird Boxes, Bat Boxes, Hedgehog House, Rainwater Planter, a mini pond and bird feeding stations to support a wide variety of Biodiversity and Pollinators especially our friends the Bees. We distributed native sunflowers seeds to 5th class pupils and our climate ambassadors from 5th class to plant at home. We also planted sunflower seeds in the school garden. We planted pollinator friendly bulbs, plants and trees throughout the school year to ensure that we were looking after the pollinators such as our Bees and Butterflies. We participated in Incredible Edibles and the SuperValu Let’s Grow GIY Grow it Yourself Campaign.

We used all of the resources from the Junior Pollinator Plan as well as resources from Biodiversity in Schools.

We adopted a cross curricular approach to our pollinator projects, we enjoyed being outdoors as well creating a variety of poems, songs and logbook. We learned about the foods we eat and the vital link between eating healthy fruit and vegetables and pollination.

We have Biodiversity signs around our school grounds indicating that our school is pesticide free, pollinator friendly and that we are letting the grass grow in designated areas of the school grounds to support Biodiversity and ecosystems. We will continue to let the grass grow in the school for the summer to allow wild flowers to flourish.

Our future plans include mapping our school grounds for bees, scoring our school, learning how to and using our IT skills to update our actions for pollinators on the National Biodiversity Data Base log.

We kept a log book throughout the year. We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures in the school garden.

DSPS Golden Bee.pdf

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