JCSP Ramsgrange Community School

Bouncy Castle          Throw Wet Sponges at someone in the Stocks          Cake Stall          Plants & Shrubs For Sale          Bottle Stall          Barbeque

Dr Betsy Hickey will be on hand to answer all of your plant/veggie/flowers queries!         

 

The Home School Community Liaison

Parents' Gardening Committee (Open/Download our latest news here) at RCS is going from strength to strength this spring 2012!

Three weeks ago the PGC began

a Fetac Level 3 course entitled

'Growing Vegetables Outdoors'.

see Community Gardeners here

Ecologist, Landscape Designer & Horticulturist Betsy Hickey is teaching the course, which will run over twenty weeks in total. Parents come into the school (Library on Maths For Fun day) for the first hour to hour and a half, where they cover theory, and the second half of the morning is spent outdoors in the back yard and 'garden' of the upper school doing the practical work.

Plans taking shape already include six raised beds measuring 8ft by 4ft by 18inches high; a 13ft Herb Wheel*, and three new trees. A massive clean-up and overhaul of the yard wall untidy wall and two sheds is also well underway. Betsy

*The herb wheel will look like a giant pizza when it is finished so everyone is especially excited about seeing it coming together. In its infancy still, the wheel just consists of a trampoline surface as yet. 

The six raised beds raised beds structures will be set in two rows of three perpendicular to the back ditch. Three young ash trees have also been planted to the fore of the side ditch. These trees currently measure about one inch in diameter. In approximately 10 YEARS the trunks will have grown to a diameter of about 18 inches, think easily huggable  

Class next week takes place on the 13th March; the following week class will be on the 20th, and then the final week's class before the Easter holiday break will be held on the 26th.

This project started out on a HSCL & Parents Gardening Committee wishlist. At the helm of the group is HSCL teacher Ann Cadogan. Ann in action She and members of the group, amongst whom are Caitriona Foskin, Mary Carroll and Anthony Russell, put together a formal proposal for submission to Wexford VEC. The PGC members knew that the ideas they had in mind for the vacant space at the rear of what is known as 'the old school' really needed an injection of 'know-how' and funding. This ambitious project intended to reflect the theme of 'Community' will eventually see the area comprising the different elements of: vegetable patch, flower beds, trees, shrub border, climbers, recreational area with picnic tables and decorative mural.  

Community Gardeners working on the first three raised beds.