Environmental Leaders – Native Garden and Frog Pond.
During our Week 3, Monday morning flag raising ceremony, we announced our 2021 St John the Apostle Catholic School Environmental Leaders. Congratulations to Archie, Christian, Declan, Isla, Anthony, Dominic, Cadel, Lola, Chelsea and Billy.
The newly appointed Environmental Leaders will be working with Mr Mulcahy to finish off the Native Garden and Frog Pond. Once this project is finished, we will start working on our next project, which we recently won a grant for, mentioned later in this report.
The Leaders will also work closely with Jeremy Gramp from Green Adelaide. In 2021, we plan to take classes for learning experiences down at Christies Creek and Beach.
One Wednesday 10 February, the Environmental Leaders joined Jeremy for a walk down the creek and beach to investigate possible learning experiences and locations for later this year.
We are very excited to continue working with Jeremy Gramp and Green Adelaide in 2021.
Our newly appointed Environmental Leaders have continued work on the Native Garden / Frog Pond Project this term.
Earlier this term, the Environmental Leaders cleared out all the weeds, established which native plants survived over the summer break and finished digging out the hole for the Frog Pond.
The leaders have continued to work with Jeremy Gramp from Green Adelaide and Mr Mulcahy to finish installing the Frog Pond, pump, and netting over the pond.
The remaining money from the NRM Grant we won last year will be spent on purchasing more Native Plants and mulch. Once this project is finished, the Environmental Leaders will start working on the Green Adelaide – Native Garden project near the new building and Carmichael Road. We plan to have this project finished at the start of Term 2.
Green Adelaide Grant
At the end of last year, we applied for funding through the Grassroots Grant program offered by the Government of South Australia, Green Adelaide Board.
On behalf of the state government and the Green Adelaide Board, we received a letter from David Speirs MP, Minister for Environment and Water on January 20, congratulating us on securing funding of $2694.50 for our project, ‘St John the Apostle school Native Biodiversity Garden’.
At St Johns, we are extremely keen to develop the school yard by creating more environmentally friendly areas for the children to play and learn in and providing important habitat for local native animals.
Through this project, we plan to raise student and community awareness of local biodiversity and how to care for fragile environments by building a native garden. The 2021 Environmental Leaders are planning on planting appropriate native plants to promote biodiversity. This will be located near our new building. A lot of the original garden was destroyed during the build, so we would like to create a new native garden.
This would be an excellent place for the native garden as it will be very visible to parents and visitors from Carmichael Road when they drive past the school. This will provide teachers, students and families with an outdoor education space to be actively involved in. We are really enthusiastic about St John the Apostle School continuing on an exciting ecological journey.
God bless,
Jamie Mulcahy - Assistant Principal Religious Identity and Mission