Celebrating National Tree Week at Knockadea N.S.
We had the most incredible start to National Tree Week recently when our lovely next door neighbour Siobhan of the O’Mahony Garden gave us a fantastic talk on trees including a slide show where we learned all about different types and shapes of trees for gardens and how they look differently throughout the seasons.
Siobhán also very kindly gave us a tour of her wonderful garden to view some truly beautiful trees such as the Paperbark Birch, the Wedding Cake Tree and Acer Osokasuki, which was a popular favourite due to its bright crimson Autumn colour.
A thousand thanks Siobhán for giving us such an interesting glimpse into life in the garden in Springtime. The children were especially enchanted by the frogspawn and tadpoles in the fishpond and by the sight of a large group of ladybirds emerging from hibernation. We later researched this and found that the collective noun for a group of ladybirds is ‘a Loveliness’ .
We are very lucky to have a nationally renowned garden and gardening tutor on our doorstep and so grateful that Siobhán shared her extensive knowledge and many top tips with us as we were led throughout the gardens, for instance such as that bees prefer blue and purple flowers with a single row of petals, very good to know! We learned a lot and are so looking forward to a return visit in Summer time.
Under Educational License and to study the life cycle of the frog, we will be fostering a small amount of the frogspawn in school until they transform into froglets when we will then release them back where they came from. The children have been taking such good care of them and it is fascinating to view the growth and changes these tiny little creatures go through on an almost daily basis.