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!

LEAF's UN Night Success

Here's a report from Naomi and Eva of LEAF GC on their successful UN Night campaign featured in an earlier post (1st Octber 2013)

".......We presented in assemblies, posted on grade walls on Facebook, wrote about it in EBrief and Dunia to make sure that students, faculty and parents were all informed about what was happening on the night itself. Because of this, the process of which we sold the corn ware products went swiftly and efficiently, thus letting our guests enjoy and take in more of joyful atmosphere that surrounded us all.

All the left over biodegradable cornware cutlery from UN Night
ready to be taken to a local recycling bin!

In the end, majority of the people had come back and returned the boxes and cutlery, and on top of that, numerous guests didn't even ask for the money back, giving us the money as a donation. With this money that we accumulated, we are now able to donate it to a cause we believe strongly in which is to plant trees in Ladakh. We think that this is a good cause because not only does it dispose of air and view pollution but also makes our lives more colorful and full of life. Without any of your help, this would not have been possible! So on behalf of the whole Leaf GC, we wanted to extend our utmost thanks to every one of you who helped make this dream a reality for our GC. Even though, we are a small GC and this may have been a small action that we took on, we all must realize and remember that even the smallest actions count, whatever it may be, small or big, as long as you did it for the better, every bit counts! So yet again, thank you for your contribution and thank you for enabling us to make a difference in our community. We hope that next year and the following years after that, we will be able to continue to make UN night  a successful plastic free event."

Completing the circle - real sustainability at UWC Dover

At last a story of genuine progress toward sustainability..not just being 'less bad' , but putting into practice the ultimate goal of sustainability - to mimic natural cycles by using waste to re-create resources.....

The Budden boys (L-R: Jochem, Sidd, Xander, Billy and Antoine) with their first home-made compost.

The Grade 12 Budden group (named after generous project sponsors and UWC parents, the Budden Family) have been turning vegetable scraps from Sodexho into compost, the nutrient-rich soil enhancer that is perfect for feeding plants on campus. With the help of Head gardener Andy Tan and a Grade 9 Service group, the boys have been converting as much as 50 kilos of food waste a day into valuable fertiliser and mulch. The first batch of the compost was recently delivered to the Rainforest Nursery GC where it has been used in place of expensive commercially-produced products. And the trees that like compost best? You might have guessed - the fruit trees such as Mangoes, Longans and Mangosteens that we have in the nursery.....which will of course eventually produce fruit whose scraps can be composted to provide fertiliser for fruit trees which will......you get the idea. We save money and resources and the boys get a good work-out and a real sense of achievement in helping the College achieve its mission. So all you Geographers, ESS students, Economists and DT kids looking for an example of a project that demonstrates  Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability (The Triple bottom line), look no further than a corner of the Dover Campus. Well done fellas!

Getting down and dirty to produce Garden Gold!

Rainforest Nursery GC continues to plant the planet....

Planting with UWC Parent Sally Letele, UWC Alumni Zach Rees
and Rainforest Nursery GC members Rahul and Mary Kate.
Photo Aayesha Fazal

Recent weeks have seen more planting by the Rainforest Nursery GC. UWC Parent Sally Letele kindly gave up space in her beautiful garden to raise 4 of our saplings grown from seed in our specialised tree nursery here at Dover. We were joined by recent UWC graduate and Sally's neighbour Zach Rees. Having studied Geography and Environmental Systems & Society at I.B, Zach maybe off to study Environmental Law at university and was very keen to develop his practical interest in conservation. Maybe a UWC education really can help build a sustainable future.

Philanthropist and fellow tree lover
 Kirtida Mekani welcomes the volunteers

Dedicated GC members also planted trees in the half term holiday joining Frazer Cairns and Frankie Meehan and his kids to help UWC Foundation Trustee Kirtida Mekani celebrate 50 years of greening Singapore. 50 trees* were planted along Punggol Promenade, a 4.5 km park connector. Kirtida is a well-known philanthropist with a dedication to environmental causes and is very kindly helping with the development of the nurseries at both campuses. It was great that we we could share in this celebration and we hope to emulate Kirtida by planting as many indigenous trees as we can in the coming years so Singapore becomes famous for real trees rather than giant pretend ones!

*3 species: Syzygium syzygoides (Kelat Hitam), Calophyllum soulattri (Bintangor Bunut) and Planchonella obovatum (Sea Gutta)
All photos: Frankie Meehan

The Meehan triplets did a great job planting this large sapling!

Arjan, Sabrina, Mary Kate and Aayesha doing what they do best.

Rahul sees our saplings off to the Botanic Gardens on the UWC truck

Another good news story for the GC is that over 20 or our indigenous saplings were recently transferred to the Singapore Botanic Gardens for data-logging before they are to be planted out on an old palm oil plantation as part of our joint reforestation project with SBG. It'll be good to see oil palm replaced with native rainforest in SE Asia for once....

UN Night- LEAF's Campaign

UN Night is coming up on the 10th October and LEAF GC is campaigning for another No Plastic initiative. Everyone is highly encouraged to bring your own plates, cutlery and bowls etc. 

LEAF will also be setting up 2 stalls supplying recycled cornware cutlery and lunch boxes that could be borrowed at a deposit on the night. If you return the cutlery and lunch boxes to the stalls, you will receive your money back, as we want to ensure they are recycled externally. Any extra money from the deposits will go to planting trees in Ladakh. 

Here is the break down of the cutlery and lunch box deposit: (as seen in pictures)

Fork + Spoon - $1
Box - $1

Fork + Spoon + Box - $2

We hope that we can continue from last year's successful initiative and move one step forward in reducing UWC's carbon footprint!