Our Garden

As recently as 2016, an unloved piece of waste-ground lay at the back of our school. One day, a green-fingered parent approached us and asked us, if we had ever considered turning that little piece of ground into a sensory garden. We wondered how this would even be possible. The seed had been sown and before we knew it, we had applied for funding from Roscommon County Council’s Local Agenda 21.

To our delight, our project entitled Inviting Biodiversity to live in our Outdoor Sensory Classroom was looked on favorably. Now, we were really on our way…

We bought stone to walk on, wooden sleepers as seating, wooden boxes as raised beds, compost, chicken manure, shrubs, bulbs, pollinator-friendly plants and decorative ornaments. A reclaimed toilet was even installed as a planter in the Pollinator Area! Parents, pupils and members of the wonderful local community, volunteered their time to help with digging, painting and much more. By our completion date in April 2017, an unused, boring, old piece of ground had been transformed into a beautiful sensory garden!

Since then, we have added to our garden each year, thanks to help from our lovely parents, staff, pupils and generous funding from GIY and Local Agenda 21.

Our GIY journey led us to an appearance on RTE’s Today Show. RTE’s Brenda Donohue and GIY’s Karen O’Donoghue visited us in January 2018 for the launch of the GIY Get Ireland Growing. You can watch our TV appearance here…

So far, we have grown apples, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, peas, onions, lettuce, cabbage and many herbs.

We have bird boxes, bird feeders, a squirrel box, bat boxes, a log pile for minibeasts to live in, a leaf pile for hibernating hedgehogs, a Bee Hotel and a whole host of pollinator-friendly shrubs and flowers. We are trying our best to create a bee-friendly habitat; afterall, without the bees, where would we be?

We are proud of our beautiful, peaceful, rural location in Kilteevan and love the vibrant, splash of colour that our garden adds to the local area. As our garden changes from season to season, we marvel at the magic of Mother Nature.

We look forward to many more days of sowing and growing in our beautiful School Garden.