New Year...New Growth

2014 and the Year of the Horse has seen a busy start for the green-fingered at Dover. The school's own dedicated Rainforest Tree Nursery is moving to the old Astro Turf area thanks to fantastic

A new nursery to raise endangered trees is in progress

College Head Gardener Andy Tan who is helping us design a more sophisticated nursery to raise endangered trees. Andy and his team have worked tirelessly over the past month desperately trying to keep all the new planting alive during the month-long drought.

As well as the new gardens by the English block, the campus has seen another superb herb and vegetable garden developed by Susan Edwards' Campus Gardeners. So as well as the one in the Junior School Playground there is now beautifully-designed new one - handily next to the canteen! Check out the wonderful range of tasty greenery at both gardens and feel free to harvest a little for your lunch...sustainably of course...

How UWC is that? Students of every colour working together (I meant the shirts)

Andy Tan guides the development of the new edible garden

Fresh Basil -Perfect for Pasta Pesto..What if we grew all our fruits and vegetables here?

Susan also spotted that our lovely Saraca tree is back in flower in the Middle School Adventure Playground. This suffered when the playground was built so it's great to see this tree come back to life in the New Year.

Saraca thaipingensis - let us know if you see any seed pods as we'd love to grow another

We have also seen more of our Rainforest Nursery trees planted by the Boarders Environmental Initiative group on the same day that our Kapok Tree (Ceiba pentranda) was planted by Student Council in  a very moving ceremony to commemorate Raja, our much loved Facilities worker who died suddenly last year.

Student Council wanted to plant a tree to remember our much - loved Raja

Plaque dedicating the tree to Raja Manickam

Boarders get busy

That ground was sure tough to dig!

Puthyda uses all her might to prepare that hole!

We're not sure if this one will survive (the tree not Shelley)

Fabio puts some muscle into it - Aanavi lost a hand but it was for a good cause

And we've no need to worry where to get fertiliser for all this new planting from as K2s have been busy trialling a worm composting experiment....

Sustainability gets an early start with K2s - I better check the worms have not escaped (or the kids).

More ways to green the campus are coming up in 2014 so if you're keen to get down and dirty, have some fun and oh yes, save the world, then get in touch and join us - kids, parents, staff..anybody's welcome! Even Bev joined us recently...it's like she was born to it!

Beverly reciting a romantic poem about compost - she loves it!