June has been a busy month for us especially in the Eco garden. We have been working on our Food for Life Plant and Share project, growing our organic potato, strawberry and carrot plants outdoors in the summer sunshine and we have had great success with them. Classes have been growing vegetable and herb plants on their windowsills in class and today they were all taken to The Simon Community building in Pollokshields. They will be planted and grown on in the garden there and harvested soon for cooking. We also shared some Chives with the Hidden Gardens in Pollokshields who have been growing them on for us and have now shared them with The People’s Pantry in Govanhill, some of whom are members at the Hidden Gardens. In these photos, you can see our chives being received at the Hidden Gardens by Andrea and by the People’s Pantry. You can also see pupils from our school at The Simon Community in Pollokshields after just dropping off all our potato, carrot, bean, strawberry, rocket and lettuce plants from our Plant and Share project. We hope that next year we can continue to grow fruit and vegetables and share our produce with the local community.
Chive plants grown by Primary 3 were shared with Andrea and Rhona at The Hidden Gardens and The People’s Pantry Govanhill.
St. Albert’s pupils delivering vegetable, fruit and herb plants from our Eco garden to The Simon Community, Pollokshields.
Also, this week our wonderful janitor Mr Moss, transformed a large branch that we found in the school grounds into a habitat for Solitary Bees by drilling centimetre wide holes into it for them to make homes in. Pollinators, including solitary bees, carry out a vital role in pollinating our crops, and also flowers and trees. In some parts of China pollination is already being undertaken by hand using paintbrushes because there are no bees left to do it naturally. We used to think that honey bees were the biggest contributors to crop pollination but that simply isn’t the case today, all types of bees are important. He embedded the post into the centre of our older wildflower patch where we have plants such as Perennial Cornflower, Red Campion, Lavender, Poppies and Shasta Daisies to provide them with nectar. Here you can see him with his creation. You can also see our finished bug hotel and the old recycling bins that were adapted to use as wheelbarrows for carrying
Mr Moss the janitor with our Solitary Bee habitat
The bees can land on the stones and drink water in our bee watering tower made from and old plant pot and dish.
Our new bug hotel which will provide homes for bees and many other insects.
Our recycled bin wheelbarrows can be used to transport canes, pots, plants and other gardening items wherever we need them.
Primary 5 had put in a lot of hard work this year to create another wildflower patch so as to increase the plant biodiversity in our Eco garden and provide more nectar for pollinating insects. They had calculated the dimensions of the size of the new flower bed they were going to make so they could edge it with all the edging stones we got from Gumtree. Then earlier in the year they had dug out the grass, laid the edging stones and sowed a mixture of wildflower plants. Here you can see the wildflowers are in bloom and are providing food for many types of bee as we found out in a recent bumblebee survey at this site.
Primary 5 undertaking a bee survey at our new wildflower patch.
Our new wildflower patch contains plants such as Borage, Lacy Phacelia, Catchflies and Herb Robert which have been a hit with the local bee population and especially Carder Bees and White and Buff tailed Bumblebees.
Bumblebee collecting nectar from Lacy Phacelia.
Close ups of the wildflowers.
Here you can see the results of the Bumblebee survey P5 undertook at the new wildflower patch in our Eco garden.
As part of our School Grounds topic, the Eco Committee ran a survey for P4-7 pupils to find out about what the pupils would like to see in their playground. We have been working with the Parent Council of St. Albert’s this year and they have taken the children’s wishes into consideration. This summer there will be members of the local community who will be working in our grounds to make these dreams a reality. Click on this link below to see the results of the survey:
Results of Upper school ground survey P4 to P7
As part of our Eco Schools topic on Biodiversity, P7 pupils had used the Seek app from iNaturalist to survey the plant and trees in all areas of our school grounds to create a database of plant life. They recorded all species names an locations on an Excel document on their iPads. These results have been added to a map of our grounds as a record for the future. The plants we have added to our school grounds this year were highlighted in yellow as a way of measuring change. We can update this document over the years to see how the biodiversity is thriving or being affected by climate change. Here you can see the many species we have in our grounds if you click on these words and the blue link that appears. We were surprised at the sheer variety of plant biodiversity in our grounds.
biodiversity data st Alberts grounds updated FINAL
