Engineering Success at St. Malachy's Primary School
15 July 2001
By Andy Smith
Towards the end of 1995, I was working for a large multinational aerospace company in England as part of a team designing, amongst other things, parachutes and an inflatable bridge! In sharp contrast, at the beginning of May this year, I spent the afternoon guiding President Mary McAleese around the Wildlife Garden at St. Malachy’s Primary School in Belfast during its official opening. So what was it that caused such change, brought me to Northern Ireland and got me involved with children and trees?
I have to admit to being discontented as an Aerospace Engineer. I was never happy working on projects where the finished article was destined for military use and felt there was a far better use for my energy and enthusiasm. Even during my degree, I spent time volunteering on organic farms and managed to organise part of my third year ‘industrial placement’ building a waterwheel by a stream in 20 acres of woodland. The electricity that the wheel would eventually generate was to provide power for the log cabin that was my home for the duration of the project. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn to live without electricity and running water.
After finishing my degree, I drifted between the same engineering company with which I had spent the first part of my university placement and a spot of travelling. It was during my third and final spell with them that I decided enough was enough and began to look for an alternative.
I lost count of the number of jobs I applied for. My enthusiasm was undoubted, but experience in conservation work was limited to organic farms and waterwheels, which didn’t prove to be enough to secure gainful employment! I don’t think I ever reached the point of giving up, but on a few occasions, I must have come close. The days in the library, scouring magazines and newspapers for job adverts seemed endless until the day I came across something from Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland. I’ve never looked back since.
The advert was for a Volunteer Officer post in Conservation Volunteers Northern Irelands’ Tree Nursery. After a brief visit there to check things out, I booked a ticket on the first available plane to leave Exeter airport bound for Belfast in 1997. I was convinced that Northern Ireland would be my home for just a year, during which I would hone the skills and accumulate the experience that would eventually lead to that elusive paid job! Eight and a half years on and I’ve found that job. I’m still living in Belfast and working as Biodiversity Officer for Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland (almost eight of those years were spent in our Tree Nursery).
But, what has this got to do with St. Malachy’s Primary School and their Wildlife Garden? Well, if none of the above had happened, I would never have become involved in this exciting and successful project, and my life would have been poorer for that.
In June 1997, I had already completed my National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level II qualification in ‘Landscapes and Ecosystems’. What I needed now was a project to help me with my Level III. I was a ‘Tree Champion’ as part of Conservation Volunteers’ Millennium Tree Campaign and was asked to do a site visit to a school in Belfast city centre. The school wanted to grow some trees and needed some advice on how to go about it.
At the back of the school was an area of grass dissected by a small car park. The area was about 40m square, and surrounded by a narrow border full of trees and shrubs that had been planted a few years before. I met a teacher, Rosaleen Torley, on a lovely summer’s day in the middle of this area and was immediately struck by the potential for it to be turned into a learning resource for the children. Not only that, but its appeal to the local wildlife could have been improved tenfold.
A previous attempt to turn a small part of this area into a wildflower meadow had failed and the school was reluctant to undertake anything more adventurous, but a little gentle persuasion did the trick and we were soon asking the children for their ideas for a wildlife garden.
It was vital to get the children involved from the very beginning. It would ultimately be their garden, their outdoor classroom, so they needed to assume some kind of ownership. The ideas that were generated were put onto one final plan by myself and submitted to the Principal for approval.
In the meantime, I applied for a Natural Pioneers Millennium Award from Conservation Volunteers to fund some tools and training courses to help me to run the project and in March 1998 we were planting the first of 650 trees supplied by the Forest of Belfast. Every child in the school spent time in the garden over those two days in March and played a part in planting at least one tree each. I honestly don’t think I have ever been so tired after two days work, but probably never so satisfied either.
Days later we were back again and involved in the construction of a willow ‘dome’. The structure was made from cut willow rods, which were sunk into the ground and held together by weaving more willow around and around the dome. The pieces of willow stuck in the ground soon began to sprout new shoots and the whole structure was alive. It is an immediate favourite amongst people visiting the garden.
Over the next few months, the newly ‘wooded’ areas were mulched with chipped bark to try and create an instant woodland soil and to keep out unwanted ‘weeds’. The ground flora would come later! The edges were defined using sycamore poles that had been thinned from another woodland.
For a year or so there was nothing much else we could do to directly improve the garden. As with most projects of this kind, money was tight and the long and laborious fundraising trail had to be followed. After one or two failed attempts, Better Belfast provided us with the funds to complete the next major step: the pond.
When I was seventeen, I had built a pond in my mum’s back garden. Since then I had dreamt of creating a real ‘wildlife’ pond. On the Friday before May Day last year, a friend of mine, Mike, offered to spend “an hour or so” digging the basic hole for the pond with a digger. The initial dig was looking good until he struck something firm a couple of feet below the turf. He moved a few feet and struck another immovable object. It turned out to be a reinforced concrete road. Anywhere else in the garden and we would have missed the road, but, not to be defeated (suggestions of a paddling pool were being bandied about), Mike arranged for a ‘rock breaker’ to be delivered and spent the next two hours destroying the obstacle. I never did apologise to his girlfriend for the cancelled dinner.
The next day was gloriously sunny. A team of ten volunteers and teachers arrived and by the end of the day we had a pond full of water. By the end of the bank holiday weekend we had tidied away all evidence of the digger and created a sunny bank using the remains of the road. A fence also surrounded the whole pond area.
Two weeks later, a group of children helped to plant the pond and another team of volunteers helped to build and install the pond-dipping platform. An unbelievable effort on the part of everybody who gave up their spare time to create what is probably the focal point of the garden.
In the year between the pond being created and the opening ceremony, the rest of the area within the wildlife garden has been developed. We have removed most of the non-native trees and shrubs from the wild area and turned an untidy border into a ‘service station’ for passing wildlife, containing mostly nectar plants for insects, which will, in turn, attract birds and other mammals.
In five years the trees have grown so much that we had to thin some of them last winter; recycling the chipped branches as mulch. The garden is really taking shape and looks very much how we intended when the plans were being drawn up. The pond, even after only one year, looks like it has been there for much longer and a vast array of wildlife is already using it as a home.
There is still much to be done though. We would like to add a path through the woodland area now the trees are mature and to increase the number of flowering plants on the woodland floor. More signage is needed to explain a little bit about what is there, but the main thing that remains to be done is to get the children outside and using their new classroom to its full potential.
They have used the area over the years, and each year group now has responsibility for looking after a particular part of the garden. At the moment, we are working on a ‘teacher’s pack’ designed to provide the teachers with all the information they need to confidently use the garden as that learning resource we have so looked forward to over the last few years. This should be ready for the new school year in September.
If there is only one thing that I have learnt over the years working with St. Malachy’s, it is that there is boundless enthusiasm within the community, and the children possess a great desire to learn and understand the world around them. I hope the wildlife garden that we have created together will provide them with a greater opportunity to fulfil at least part of this desire and that the experience of working on and in the garden will remain with them for some time to come.
The project so far has involved over 400 children from the area, many parents and teachers and another 25 volunteers from all corners of Europe and beyond, recruited on their days off from the ranks of Conservation Volunteers! Without all of these people the project would never have happened. The opening ceremony was the culmination of six years hard work and very much a celebration for the school, local community and all others involved. Having someone like President McAleese to open the garden only added to the sense of pride and occasion.
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