Slemish College, Ballymena
Date: 2 February 2005
No. of trees planted: 275
No. of people involved: 260
Slemish College joined forces with the Northern Ireland Tree Campaign to significantly improve their school grounds for the benefit of local wildlife. Despite the chilly weather, 260 pupils from the school planted a mixture of downy birch, pedunculate oak, rowan, alder and hazel trees in their school grounds.
The integrated college has been working hard to improve their wildlife value over the past year on various projects with funding from the Environment and Heritage Service. Maureen Wells of Slemish College explained the importance of the tree planting to the school’s environmental enhancements. “Planting trees in this area will benefit the teaching of the science, maths and geography curricula, but we also anticipate benefits in other areas of the curriculum, such as art, where the whole school will be able to gain inspiration from the colours, sounds, textures and patterns found in nature”.
This is an exciting project and one of the first tree planting schemes to be awarded free trees.