Wilder School - St Marks Catholic Primary School

Today we met with the headteacher.

The aim of the sessions today was to start thinking about projects we could put into action over the year.  After meeting with Dr Kellar, we went outside and looked at the space available and brainstormed ideas for wildlife. The potential at St Marks is huge and we had lots of ideas brimming by the end including:

1. Wildflower meadow

2. Bird boxes

3. Orchard and tree planting

After the session we sent St Marks links that they could apply for trees and compost with!

We began collecting data ...

During our visit we started by introducing the project to year 4.  We explained who we were and what we wanted to achieve at their school.

Once we had completed our presentation, we got the children to do Nature connection surveys that we could use for comparison at the end of the 3 years.  The rest of the day we spent mapping their school grounds.

Splitting into small groups we used tape measures to record the diameter of spaces such as long grass vs cut grass and the lengths of hedgerow we already had. We also counted the number of trees and features such as flower beds, bug hotels and log piles. This gave us a great basis to start from. 

Beginning work! 

Today we started work on mapping out and creating our wildflower meadow. Even Dr Kellar came down and got involved with the project. The children loved ripping up their school field and were full of excitement about what it would become.  We also had received word that the school had been awarded the trees for their project from a funding link we had sent them!  

Exciting updates!

We have had exciting updates from the school as we prepare to visit them next week to build nest boxes for next year and talk about the next stages of the project. 

They have planted 21 fruit trees and 7 berry plants and over 50 other small trees! 

We have been catching up with St Marks in Ipswich today.

We planned out their new cross shaped flower bed, which will have a mixture of evergreen shrubs, grasses and perennial flowers. The perennials will include gladioli, lucky clover, canterbury bells in one section, ranunculus and mixed lilies in another section, peonies, dhalias and freesias in another all surrounded by grasses and lavender. There will also be rhododendron running through the middle creating the shape of the cross. 

They have also added new hedgerows using red robins and we are looking at adding native hawthorn in other places. We planted rose bushes at the front of the school as well as purple pansies. Further to this we have established what we have to create a wildflower bank on the edge of the school field and wildflowers under the orchard trees. This will have a mixture of cornflowers, poppies, Ox eye daisy red clover, forget me nots and more.

The school has begun embedding wilder school into their curriculum by planning for the future that each year group will have responsibility over various areas.

Next week we shall be continuing this work and also putting in a fedge (living fence) to protect some of the flower beds.

All of this has been achieved with help from parents and the local community as well as donations and applying for grants for equipment and resources. We think you'll agree this is all much nicer than just grass!

We headed back to St Marks today to catch up on what had been happening in the last month. It was great to see the growth in the previously planted flowers, trees and hedgerows. We also tightened up the new willow fencing and added more fencing along another flower bed. 

We then took a group of children and challenged them to see how much rubbish each team could collect. They had great fun using the litter pickers and racing around the yard trying to find the most rubbish. In the end we removed two large bin bags of rubbish from the school grounds!

We have planned some future sessions including looking at how we incorporate this into the curriculum as a foundation of wilder schools. 

Unfortunately, this next part of our timeline isn't so happy. The school has worked so hard to become a wilder school by adding spaces for wildlife into their school.  The school already had a wildlife-friendly forest school area. This habitat was bordered by a beautiful and very valuable holly bush as well as a well-established holly tree. At an unknown time, somebody illegally trespassed onto their land cut down the hedgerow, cut down the holly tree amongst other small trees, cut large branches in their woodland area, and dumped a lot of dangerous material and waste onto their land including broken toys, sharp metal poles, old fencing and lots of plastic waste.

Although highly upsetting to the teachers and the children we have worked with them to create a plan. Luckily the Holly will regrow and in the meantime, a natural screen will be erected to protect the now visible space into the school field from the neighbouring property. Using the branches and some dumped wood fencing, year 4 shall create habitat piles which are fantastic for invertebrates and provide valuable hiding spaces for small mammals. The holly bushes that were cut down will be composted alongside leaf litter and other compostable materials. This large pile will be created near the flower beds so the compost can be used in this area.  Finally, we shall use some of the large branches to create stag beetle stacks.

We hope that out of this vandalism comes new life and adds to the brilliant work they have been doing.