In this guest blog, St Joseph’s Secondary School tells us how they have created new wildflower meadows in the school grounds.
St Joseph’s Secondary School is an all girls school located in Castlebar in the West of Ireland. We are situated on the old grounds of Lord Lucan’s country house designed in 1825, so not only do we have a rich history but are lucky enough to have wonderful spacious grounds!
In recent years we have taken on a number of biodiversity long term projects, not least our meadow making initiative; inspired by Dr. Una Fitzpatrick’s video: Creating Meadows for Biodiversity which was short, informative and perfect for our students.
Once we had the areas selected, the machine topped the long grass and our students came out in force to rake the hay from the site; this was a good workout, good for our wellbeing, sociable and took a number of days to complete!
After the meadow was cleared, our students scarified areas in the meadow to sow yellow rattle seed. We were gifted this seed from Michael Chambers from the Wild Nephin National Park and hope to collect our own seed if we have successful germination this year.
As we learned from the video, it takes time and some management. In the meantime we have been collecting wildflower seeds such as knapweed and red campion which we may add along with our yellow rattle.
We are now in late August and collected yellow rattle seed last week from plants that germinated and produced seed! Currently we have identified Dandelion, Buttercups, Knapweed, White clover, Red clover, Birds-foot trefoil and Thistle. In areas outside the meadow we have identified Ivy, Hawthorn, Bramble, Ragwort and Knapweed. When the meadow gets well established in the forthcoming years, we hope to save fresh seeds for other schools or community projects that would like to establish a meadow like us.
The Principal of St Joseph’s – Peadar O’Tuathail continues to be very supportive, and now that the meadow is underway, we hope to collect data by way of a ‘Flower-Insect Timed Count’ before the end of September with further counts next Spring. This way, we will identify flower species in the habitat and visiting insect groups, contributing to the National Biodiversity Data Centre’s records. This activity has proven to be cross curricular taking in Science, CSPE, DCG, Geography as well as Climate Action, Sustainability and Global Citizenship!
Find out more:
How to Develop a Pollinator Plan for your School
Video: Creating Meadows for Biodiversity
Creating and restoring meadows in local communities and gardens
All-Ireland Pollinator Plan schools homepage