Longford School St Mel's NS of Ardagh advocate for biodiversity

This year National Diversity Week is being celebrated from May 19 - 28.
St Mel’s National School, Ardagh, took part in the inaugural Nature Hero Awards, a national competition in which 200 schools participated.
The Nature Hero Award is Ireland’s first, standalone outdoor learning award. It is a mark of excellence for a school that recognises exceptional work by students and staff to help nature. St Mel’s NS were thrilled to be awarded the 2nd place silver award.

The aim of the achievement is to create an educational space that nurtures a love of nature, develops a knowledge of our biodiversity and encourages action to help it locally.

It covers many topics such as school gardening, biodiversity conservation, ecological literacy, responsible citizenship as well as physical and mental wellbeing.

Led by the children in 5th Class in Ardagh NS, with the support of their teachers Mrs Hewitt and Ms Greene, the children put in huge work making the school more biodiversity friendly.

This included planting a native Irish hedge, sowing bulbs and wildflowers, planting fruit trees to help the bees and butterflies, putting up bat and bird boxes, creating a school pond, tending to various flowers and vegetables in the school greenhouse to promote sustainability and creating an outdoor learning area at the back of the school.

The children also created art displays to inform people of the work they were undertaking and sent home monthly newsletters to keep parents informed of all their hard work.

The competition is run by ‘Biodiversity in Schools’ and was sponsored by Glenveagh Homes. Powerstown ETNS, Dublin won the overall 1st prize of a school garden/outdoor classroom upgrade worth up to €10,000.

The teachers and children in Ardagh loved taking part and would highly recommend the competition to other schools for the next academic year.
Ardagh NS worked closely with Mark Nolan from ‘Biodiversity in Schools’ (info@biodiversityinschools.com) who visited the school on a number of occasions to offer support and was a great help throughout.

The school also wishes to thank Brendan Farrell from ‘Ardagh Village Landscapes’ who played a huge part in helping to transform the school and was always on hand to lend advice and guidance. Not forgetting also ‘KSB Greenhouses’ Longford who did a fabulous job erecting the greenhouse.

With the continued support and encouragement of Ms Teresa Kearney (Principal) and the whole school community we look forward to continuing the good practice applied in this project for years to come!