Miss Swallow Departs!

This week, DiGGers gave Miss Swallow a great send-off with cakes and a signed card.  It will be her last day on Friday before she moves to take up a new post in Aberdeenshire.

Danielle and Sara baked cup cakes and added a gardening touch!

We quickly reduced the cakes to a pile of papers!!

Miss Swallow will really miss everyone at Dingwall Academy (especially the DiGGers!) and sincerely hopes that the garden will continue to be looked after.  DiGGers will be taken over by Mr Macfarlane (a familiar face in the garden) and Mrs Morton so good luck to them - "You will be rewarded for your efforts as the DiGGers are all great individuals!"  So "Keep DiGGing" everyone and start growing this year's Christmas Dinner!!

The Forest School Group also had a great session today and will be sorry to see her go!  There was also cake and a wonderful card...

...we finished with a walk to the pond area to show her all the work that has been done in the last few weeks.

The cabin is looking great - Ryan and Alexander did us proud last week speaking about the project in Edinburgh at the "Outdoor and Woodland Learning Scotland" Launch event.  Keep up the good work everyone - I'll be expecting more changes to see next time I visit the woods!

ROWAN event and Spring Fair

Whilst Miss Swallow has been away, there were another two big events that DiGGers were involved in that made her very proud!

The first was an "over to you" event to mark the end of a three year project that ROWAN has been involved in to encourage schools to cut down on their waste.  We are using the RIDAN composter to compost the canteen waste as a direct result of their campaign.  The participating schools presented on their various projects and DiGGers were excellent hosts looking after everyone.  Connorhan and Danielle also did a presentation about the Certificate in Practical Horticulture course that they have been studying.

The event was also combined with presenting our first Growing Hub certificates.  Two pupils from St. Clements were awarded a bronze certificate; well done to them!  Hopefully pictures to follow...

The second event was a new Dingwall Academy occasion - the Spring Fair (Saturday 28th March).  Everyone had a great day; there were many stalls and displays.  DiGGers wrote to local garden centres and supermarkets and were donated plants to sell as well as their own seedlings and seed potatoes.  Again, they worked really hard and did themselves proud raising just over £105 for the club!  Again, pictures to follow...

Finally, Miss Swallow has returned to school albeit three days a week, so we could get cracking with tidying up the garden and have eventually managed to re-anchor the Olympic Jubilee Greenhouse to the ground.

There has been a lot of devastation with the winter winds so we had to gather lots of pots and sticks up that had blown about.

Cutting timber to secure the greenhouse to the ground.
Also during the Easter break, the groundwork has been done for the Outdoor Classroom (hooray!).

 The topsoil from the plot was donated to the garden...so here it is!