Rumours of Eco Gardening

There is a rumour that we will have an eco gardening club next year. Eco friendly plans have already been drawn up for our grounds and the club will be a real step forward to making those plans come true. We haven't a huge reserve of gardening expertise among the staff, and would love to hear from families or friends who could help with a bit of advice, labouring, supervision, 'adopting' one of the garden projects on the plan.

Wild Roundabout

The next time you go round the roundabout at the top of the town in Newcastle, have a look at our bed of Basque wild flowers, planted last year by a group of our students, Janet McIlvenna of Down District Council and EcoSeeds of Strangford. I well remember that drizzly Saturday morning during out HallowE'en holidays. Its wonderful to see the flowers blossom through to their second year. I wonder how the twin wild flower bed in the Basque Country is doing? Best of all is that our own EcoSeed, Morgan himself, is blossoning again and looking good.

EcoSpeakers

Well done to Sophie Hennessey and Catriona Kirwan, who presented their ideas on the environment to Janet McIlvenna of Down District Council.

Litter Picking Visitors

We had some very welcome visitors today. Participants at a conference in the Slieve Donard Hotel undertook volunteering activities in the local area for one of their conference sessions. We all do our best to keep Shimna litter free, but our windy site means that inaccessible litter gets wedged in the perimeter fence and our visiting volunteers offered to hoke it out. We are very grateful for the help, to our visitors and also to Deborah McDowell who organised the event.

Trees Planted

Year 8 science students today planted out twelve new trees, wild cherries in the grove by the wiggly fence, alder with their feet near the pond and birch on the hll towards the church. Teams of waterers and tree minders will look after the saplings as they grow. More trees will come in the autumn, and will be planted out according to the land scaping design drawn up for us by governor Jean Forbes.

Cardboard

We have started to see real benefits from all that bin-hoking. Remember that we found that our biggest single waste substance was cardboard? and that we were able to have the cardboard recycled by the local interchurch project? Well, Mick has been keeping an eye on the effects and we filled four bins fewer with landfill rubbish just by the action alone of recycling the cardboard. Benefits all round. We will be able to save money next year by hiring fewer bins. The interchurch project will gain the proceeds they earn from suppyling the cardboard to the recyclers, and everyone benefits from less landfill.

Recycling Mobile Phones

There is a huge heavy box waiting in the hall to be collected by the carriers. It's full of exhausted mobile phones which students and head of physics, Alasdair Spence, have collected for recycling. The benefits are as big as the box. The phones will be reused where possible, and recycled safely when re-use isn't possible. Because each recylced phone raises money, Shimna science department will also benefit. So many of us love our phone, so many people get new ones for Christmas and so much damage is done if the phones are just thrown away. This has been a really worthwhile project.