The Eco Team have had a busy and productive year in the school garden! This is the second year of growing in our newly sited growing garden and we’ve had some great success despite the unpredictable weather. This year we have grown potatoes, carrots, parsnips, peas, beans, corn, potatoes and fennel. Although we’ve shared our fruit harvest with the birds, we’ve had some good fruit from our established strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, rhubarb, blackcurrant and redcurrant plants. For the first time, we tried hard to use some of our produce in school this year, as well as taking home the things that we grow. We picked herbs and dried them, before jarring them up and selling them at our Eco Stall on School Fun Night. We also made jam using strawberries and rhubarb from our school garden – that was sticky but fun! Thanks to Tony and Brendan, we have a fresh bottle greenhouse. This new greenhouse has the ability to harvest rainwater, owing to a clever gutter and barrel system – very useful for watering the garden in hot weather! Thankyou to all the pupils who helped us to repurpose the bottles from our old greenhouse; we needed lots of help to wash the old moss-covered bottles before they were reused again. That means that this plastic is now onto its third life! Finally, some members of Eco Team joined Mrs. O’Donnell at Mossley Mill, Newtownabbey to collect our well-earned, new Eco Flag! This was a great day of celebration for many schools across Northern Ireland.