Construction of the School Garden

Our school garden was launched on March 24th 2007 when pupils, teachers, mammies, daddies, grandparents, little brothers and sisters gathered together at 10am and worked until late - not even going home for lunch. The following photos are a small glimpse of the work and fun on that great day!

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Ollie with his favourite toy launching the garden, thanks for the dig-out!!

Looking for divine inspiration!

Even Mammies lent a hand, and were clever enough not to get their hands dirty!

Pupils flat out!

Camera-shy John!

Tea-break!

Mother and Daughter, great team spirit!

Where can we dump this lot?

Girl Power!

Every project needs a supervisor! Well done Kit!

Daddies at work!

Come on brother! It ain't heavy!

All hands on deck!

Look at our sunflowers!

Senior Infants with their sunflowers!

First Class with their runner beans!

Second Class with their runner beans!

The Waterboys!

Now all we need are the seats!

Much work has gone on in the garden before, after and during school in the last month. More photos will follow later!

April 20th 2007 The Big Plant!

Again all children planted and sowed in the garden today (flowers, fruit, herbs and vegetable) from 2pm - 5pm and its all looking pretty good - even though its not finished yet. It is hoped the rabbits, crows and pigeons don't help themselves to our crops.

The Big Plants!!!

Everyone is Busy!

Roll over Boys!!

All the boys together!

What are you hiding behind your back Kevin?

Nearly ready!

All ready for play!

Fruits of our Labour

Guess what's for dinner tonight?

Rathkenny School wins top prize!Green-fingered pupils rewarded for their excellent gardening skills!

The green-fingered pupils of Rathkenny N.S. wered thrilled to have their efforts in the garden rewarded when they won first prize in the best new garden category in the Meath Councils Pride of Place awards !

Rathkenny N.S. received a certificate, crystal trophy and a cheque for ?500. The school will also have the chance to visit the W5 centre in Belfast.

Ms. Coogan would like to thank those who supplied plants and feeds particularly Beechmount Garden Centre, Tom McGuinness Seeds, Grangegeeth and Brennans Nurseries, Carlanstown. Thanks also to those who supported the school financially and gave of their time freely in the evenings. Thanks went to the Board of Management, parents, children, local people and businesses for all kinds of help, advice and support.

Official opening of the school garden with special guests John Donegan and Brian Meade and Coscan!

The school held an evening of celebration with guests Coscan and Meath players John Donegan and Brian Meade who are past pupils of the school. See pictures below!

The Garden Work Continues:

An overgrown area was cleared in November to make way for our new woodland. Many children and their parents gave up their Saturday to prepare the area.

At last due to football commitments and bad weather a start was made to develop the cleared site on Friday 7/12/2007 from 2.00 - 4.30pm! Our trees and hedging are now planted by the senior room and the woodland area is looking great. Many birds visited to inspect the work - even Santa's robin came to look! The ground area is now being covered with bark mulch which is the shredded remains of a pruning job done by Ollie Gore. More mulch was obtained from Navan Recycling Centre.

Bulb week is now starting 7th - 14th December 2007 . All the school will plant bulbs - daffodils, crocus, tulips, snowdrops and bluebells. Thanks to Mark O'Carroll and Woodies who supplied the bulbs free of charge! Fingers crossed that the rabbits don't decide to have a midnight feast!

Pictures below!

Woodland Update

Our woodland looks brillant now after all the hard work. See pics below!

Garden from September 2007

Ger Clarke from Dalgan Park visited our school a few times in Autumn. In November he brought acorns and talked to the whole school about germination, planting and growing seeds. All were shown how to plant and each child planted an acorn in a pot to link up with this years garden theme of trees. See pictures below.

During National Tree Week 6^th class planted 3 big trees in our hedgerow, an oak, a chestnut and a beech tree.

Dale Treadwell called on that day to give details on how to plant and stake the trees. He also gave a talk and demonstration on how to identify trees and gave cards on tree and leaf recognition. See pictures below.

Bulbs: Our bulbs have started to peep and flower. We now have daffodils and crocuses and snowdrops along the path and in the woodland.

Vegetables: We sowed our leeks, cabbages and onion seeds on 14^th March 2008, the day of the Easter holidays and now they are up. We will soon be planting again. Jack’s dad, Johnny, supervised the seed sowing.

Special Feature 'The Pond'.

In May 2008 we added a special feature to our woodland. The hard work begun on a crisp May Saturday morning with parents lending their hands. We decided to add this to the woodland as we had lots of other habitats and we got very excited at the thought of having our very own frog family with a new home of their own. See photos of how it was transformed.

Will we be able to swim in this, Miss?!!!

Oh la la Ms White!!

We put the final touches to the pond!

Garden Judge Eanna Ní Lamha

Eanna Ní Lamha came to the school on Thursday 29^th May to judge our garden/woodland for the Pride of Place competition. She was very impressed and took a good look around with children from each class, Junior Infants – Sixth Class. She asked us lots of questions and we told her all about all our hard work over the months. We will have to attend the prize giving to see did we win anything for all our hard work.

Eanna Ni Lamha talks to pupils and Ms Coogan about all the great work that was done!

Great News at Pride of Place Awards!