Our Award Winning School Garden
Our Award Winning School Garden
We have an award winning school garden.
Our school garden won the ECO Unesco Young Environmentalist awards.
We have a number of raised beds in our school garden that have yielded very good harvests. The education of sowing to harvesting is something that is embraced by pupils and staff at Newcastle NS.
Developing an appreciation of growing your own fruit and vegetables is something we like to impart on to our pupils. We find the pupils naturally enjoy being able to care and nurture for the plants as they grow and they thoroughly enjoy the day when to do the big harvest.
We follow a crop rotation system and each year plant vegetables from bean, root, allium and brassica families. Over the years we have successfully grown , different varieties of potatoes, lettuce, scallions, cabbages , radish, carrots and even rainbow chard to name but a few.
We also have taken some of the harvest back into school and made delicious food from our harvest.
Sensory Garden
Our Sensory Garden has five boxes for each of the five senses. In
the taste box we have plants such as chives, strawberries, herbs and
onions. In the smell box we have curry plant, lots of mint, marjoram
and lemon balm. In the touch box we have lamb’s ears and fennel.
The hearing box contains snap dragons and feather grasses. Finally,
in the sight box we have some emperor poppies, Jerusalem
artichokes, globe artichokes and campanula.
We also have plenty to tempt and support bees. Our bee box
contains large double tulips, foxgloves and lots of cranesbill. We also
have dog roses, gladioli, daffodils, lavender, mallow, calendula and
nasturtium.
Our school garden houses our chicken coop. Our parents association upgraded our chicken coop this year and purchased us an Eglu. We love looking after our chickens Pepsi and BBQ (BB for short). Every morning we let them out of their coop, gather their eggs and feed them. We love using their freshly laid eggs for baking!
Our 4th,5th,6th classes take it in turns to look after our school garden under the guidance of Mrs. Magnier.