ECO News

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Developing St Francis' Garden

Over the last number of years in St. Clare’s Abbey we have been working to develop our Eco profile. We have received two green flags in recent years thanks to Mr Byrne our Eco-Coordinator in school, our school eco council each year, our pupils and all our staff.

St. Francis of Assisi is celebrated as a Patron Saint of Ecologists, and he is also one of the founder saints of our school. An aim of our school is to follow in his footsteps as he had such respect for creation through love as he saw it as “intimately united” with God. “Everything spoke to Francis of the infinite love of God.”

We have transformed a waste area of our forest into what we call our St. Francis Garden with the help of a very helpful parent Mr Meleadey. He has a huge knowledge of biodiversity and wanted to help us to create this area. Here we have created a water source through our pond and have aimed to develop and increase the biodiversity in our school. We have begun this through our recent whole school planting project in our school where each child was able to plant bulbs. We have already seen an increase in wildlife in this area around our pond area especially with frogs, snails and slugs being found. We plan to add to this area by spreading seeds to add further colour and increase the biodiversity in our St. Francis Garden. We look forward to watching this area develop in the weeks, months, and years ahead.