The Wildlife Garden and Pond
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The Widlife Garden and Pond has been an ongoing project now for just over a year. We view it as a long term, ever evolving, learning resource for the children and one which we, as a school, can take advantage of all year round.
The children have been involved from the very start and they were instrumental in the planning of the layout and elements incorporated. It is hard to believe that it is over three years since we first had the thought of developing some of the school grounds along the line of a wildlife garden! As they say though, great oaks from little acorns grow.....and we live in hope that some of our little acorns will eventually grow thus.
We have been very lucky in being able to access grants from various bodies to pay for all the equipment and materials required, for without those, the project could never have gone ahead. Thanks are due to Morvern Common Good Fund and Scottish National Heritage, for grant aid and to Forest Enterprise, who supplied labour and materials for the deer fencing, as well as providing us with two picnic/work tables.
However, there are others to thank, not least among them being Donald Kennedy of Scottish Wildlife Trust who has helped us every step of the way, from the planning, to the maintenance of the garden, as well as the construction of the bird table and boxes. The parents too 'mucked in' (literally, I think - it can be a muddy job!) and helped clear some of the scrub and also helped in the construction of the pond, which was a major task. Tilcon (Lochaline), now Tarmac, helped here too, by providing us with a JCB and driver to dig out the pond itself.
21/02/02
Tree Nursery
Work has now started on the upgrading of the stock fence, round the pond area, to a complete deer fence. The contractor has been working here for the past three days in all this atrocious weather..........I do not envy him his job!
We are moving the entrance to this area as well, so access will now be from the top of the slope, rather that at the bottom as before. Once the area is fenced, we will then have to look at clearing the brambles etc and getting the ground prepared for starting up our new nursery. Hopefully the weather should improve in the near future to allow us to do this.
28/02/01
The fencing is now complete. We will have to wait for some better weather now before we can embark on the clearing of brambles etc. in preparation for the construction of nursery beds.
August 2002
The site for the tree nursery has now been dug over and black polythene has been laid to suppress the growth of most of the weeds. A small shed/tool store is now in situ and the site will remain as it is until the spring of next year, when we hope to plant those seeds we have gathered this autumn. We also hope to have each child plant a young tree soon, so that they can start to anticipate how the nursery will develop. It's such a long time to wait for a tree to grow from a seed when you are little that we have decided to lessen the time for them!
Please click here and here for more details of this project
