Making Christmas Wreaths with The RHS

Today we had a masterclass with Sarah from the RHS who showed us how to make Christmas Wreaths.

We made a circular shape with long lengths of Ivy, and then wrapped more lengths of Ivy around and around to make a thick wreath shape.  Green garden wire was wrapped around to help keep the shape of the wreath.  We then move in holly, Ivy seed heads, berries, dried orange and apple slices and a few pine cones. 

Here are a few of the finished wreaths.

Now we know how to make the wreaths we are going to make a few more next year to sell as we have had lots of enquiries about them from our staff.

Decorating the tree

Making some decorations for the tree.  Sarah from the RHS brought some raw materials and instructions.  The students cut a log into slices about 1.5 - 2 cms think.  Drilled holes in and then threaded cord into the holes to make a pattern.

Decorating the tree.

Here are a couple of creations the students made a couple of weeks ago.

And here is our finished tree - doesn't it look great!

Planting a few trees

We registered for 25 free trees from UK Oak Doors

http://www.ukoakdoors.co.uk/info-trees-for-schools

 which were delivered to school last week.  The idea is to use them to create a shelter belt which will hopefully give us a bit of shade in the summer as it can get really hot in the EPICC building.

Here one of our students is measuring out to see how much space we should leave in-between the trees.

Measuring and marking where each tree should be planted.

Digging a hole

Separating each tree from a tangle of roots.

Putting the tree into the soil

Packing the soil around and giving it some water.

11th December - Filling the pond and decorating the tree.

Today we were working on our pond with Sarah from the RHS.  Firstly sand was put down all over the bottom of the pond, then a special fluffy liner, and then a pond liner.   

The students are helping flatten out the liner and remove some of the creases, tucking the liner around the edges.

This is the fluffy material which lies between the sand and the pond liner.

Under the fluffy layer is a layer of builders sand.

Sarah is pulling some of the creases out of the liner.

I'm not sure what one of our students is doing here - but I'm sure he is helping to pull the liner into shape?

Working out a problem with the pump.

We had to dismantle a bit of the pump to work out how we were going to put it all back in the pond to ensure that the liner is flush with the edge.  Some of our students enjoy trying to work out how to solve practical problems.

Filling the pond up.

We started filling the pond today, it got about half full and we decided to turn the tap off and continue tomorrow - it got dark and we were worried we would forget to turn it off!  The water has to stand for a week in the pond before we start to put the plants back in.

Friday 6th December - Going to get a Christmas Tree

Today we went to collect a Christmas Tree which had been very kindly donated by Plantsworld in Gosforth

http://www.plantsworld.co.uk/

Loads of Christmas Trees all packaged up ready for buyers.

We select our tree for the EPICC unit.

Thank you very much Plantsworld!

And buy a few extra for the staff at School.

We even did a delivery service!

RHS Wednesdays - continuing working on the pond.

Today we made the final preparations for fitting the pond liner next week.

Filling in the gaps underneath the side of the pond with top soil.

The posts have all been cut to the same size.

All the boards were checked to make sure everything is properly fastened together.

We are all set to fit the liner next week, we bought sand to line the pond and we have some fleece material to put between the sand and the liner.

1st December - 2 years having hens at school.

We have now had hens with us at school for almost 2 years.  It seems a long time since we traveled up into snowy Northumberland to dismantle a hen house and bring back 8 hens.  We still have a couple of the original flock, they are getting rather old and don't lay any eggs anymore and are hopefully enjoying their hen retirement.

Here is Hero, one of the original hens - she got her name as she survived an attack by a fox when she was living up in Northumberland.  We have learnt a great deal over the last two years about keeping hens, what they like to eat, how to spot when they are sick and the sort of things we can do to try to make them well again.  

Here are a few more of our flock of 14, we have two cockerels Marius and Ritchie, who get along very well.  They don't crow very much as far as I know?  Our hens are fed and get clean water every day, they eat layer pellets and a grain mixture which they really enjoy.  We also give them greens from our garden, they like eating lots of weeds that we pull up from the veggie beds.  We also get damaged and un-saleable vegetables from one of our local supermarkets to supplement their diet.  We have found that hens love grapes, beansprouts, apples, strawberries, raspberries, broccoli and other leafy green veg.  They will not eat carrots or mushrooms though and don't really like sprouts, which is a bit like our students!

A few of our hens are moulting at the moment, something hens do about once a year.  This is Spot 2 one of the young hens we got at the end of the summer term.  They lose a lot of feathers and don't lay any eggs - they look a bit cold for a few weeks, but with some TLC they re-grow their feathers pretty quickly and start to lay eggs again.  Collecting the eggs remains a popular job with our students, and I will always remember the time a student found a nest hidden behind the nesting boxes containing over 20 eggs.

The white hen is another of our original hens we got two years ago and is either called Foghorn, or Leghorn?  The black one you can hardly see is a young hen who is about 6 months old now, she always tries to get inside the feed box to be first to feed.  We have a few ex-battery hens, I think we have 4 at the moment.

This is Stobbart one of our ex-battery hens - named for some reason after the haulage company?  She has a bit of a wonky beak, which kind of crosses over - it does not stop her eating though.  All of our hens are pretty friendly, some of them quite like being picked up by the staff and students.  They seem to like people having a bit of a chat with them as they walk past the hen run - we notice this particularly in the summer holidays when things are quiet, they seem to miss people being around and all rush to the side of the run when they hear your keys jangling to unlock the gates.

Another one of the ex-battery hens, although I'm not sure what this one is called.  The hen house is given a good clean out about once a week, surprisingly this also is quite a popular job with some of our students who don't mind getting their hands dirty.  We have a ready supply of manure for our veggie beds.

So what's next?  Well our garden is going to be a lot bigger next year, so we have lots of work to do.  Hopefully when our new area is established and the vegetable beds have been moved we will expand the hen run, giving our hens a bit more room to run around in.  There is a bit of interest in maybe keeping a couple of turkeys next year?  And we plan to have a go at hatching some eggs in the spring.