CONGRATULATIONS TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THIRD CLASS AND THEIR TEACHER MS LAMBERT. THEY WON ECO TRIBES AND RECEIVED A BEAUTIFUL PLAQUE AND €300 WORTH OF GARDENING VOUCHERS FOR THE SCHOOL. WELL DONE EVERYONE!!
Irish TV footage – the footage from Dromiskin begins the second half of Louth Matters show
The chall
enge in this year’s Eco Tribes was to create a medieval, monastic garden outside the school grounds somewhere in Dromiskin. We then had to organise a public event and publicise our new creation. Ms Lambert’s 3rd class worked closely with Dromiskin Tidy Towns to help select the site that would best fit in with the theme set out by Groundswell’s Pamela Whitaker. We looked at a number of sites including St Ronan’s Villas and the junction at the railway bridge. However we had a clear winner with a piece of ground in the shadow of the Round Tower adjacent to Dromiskin’s ancient monastery. Where else could we choose!! Now it was time to get to work!!
We decided that we would continue to name our tribe as “The Blackthorns” and that we would use our butterfly with thorns tag.
We asked Brendan Stewart, the owner of the site, for permission to use his ground. Brendan very kindly agreed.
We looked closely at the Mutual Ground blog to get some ideas for our planting and for our public event. There was a detailed plant list which we printed off and studied. We loved the idea of the raised willow beds and of dressing up as monks, lords, ladies and serfs
We talked to Pamela Whitaker and she called to the class a number of times and gave us lots of ideas about plants and of some of the medieval customs. We were getting excited!!
In History we studied some of our local saints. We decided that we could do a pilgrimage or stations as part of our evening’s entertainment. We learned about St Ronan, St Catherine, St Margaret, St Patrick and St Peter who all have connections to the village. We also researched our family crests.
In art and crafts we made shields which we painted and decorated with our family crests and our Blackthorn tag. Ray from Hoey’s Timber Products very kindly gave us recycled sheets of wood to make the shields. Seamus Mc Ardle from Dromiskin Tidy Towns used his carpentry skills to cut out the shapes. Seamus is our’s and Dromiskin’s best friend!!
We sourced willow from kind, local farmer Pat Cluskey. Peter, Lucy and Ellen had great fun in the willow forest with Mr Mulligan and Seamus cutting down long lengths of willow.
We asked the local CE workers to clean up the site and get it ready. They did a great job.
Along with Henry Murtagh, Seamus, Mary Murtagh, Denise Mc Donnel Morgan and Liam Reilly all from Dromiskin Tidy Towns we planned out the design of our garden. We decided to create three different willow beds to complement the two beds there already one of which contained Seamus’s beautiful bog oak sculpture. We would name the five beds after the saints we had studied.
Seamus, Ms Lambert, Mr Mulligan and lots of children started making the willow beds. One was a rectangle against the wall, one was circular and the last one was in the shape of a Celtic cross. We really enjoyed weaving and discovered that there is a lot of maths involved in designs!! 
Dromiskin Tidy Towns provided top soil and Paddy Drumgoole’s digger filled the bed helped by Henry Murtagh.
Seamus Mc Ardle made a fantastic Contemplation Seat out of stone which fits in so well on this ancient site. How lucky we are to have someone like Seamus on our tribe!!
Ms Lambert devised a pageant for the public event – we would have fiddlers and dancers, a Lord and Lady of the manor, an abbot and monks (including a “jester” monk!) and serfs. We would have a sacred fire and a contemplation chair for a sinner to contemplate his sins. Who would be the sinner?!! We would march in procession to our garden along with Mums, Dads and fellow pupils and visitors. The monks would tell us all about the saints and our “Jester” would provide some humour! Ms Lambert picked all the parts and we practised very hard. Loads of Speech and Drama here!!
Everyone in the class worked very hard on their costumes and a big thank you to the Mums and Dads. We even had a tonsure for Adam!!
Time to go to Dundalk and Haggardstown Garden Centres to pick our plants. We were very lucky to have Benedicta Mc Ardle from Dromiskin Tidy Towns to help us pick our herbs, flowers, vegetables and fruits. Benedicta also came to the school and gave a talk to 3rd class and gave us information on lots of the plants. Thanks Benedicta – we learned so much!!
Morgan, Liam, Megan and Katie went over to Seabank and collected lots of seaweed. We then made lots of seaweed fertiliser which we placed in recycled milk containers. It smells rotten but will help the plants to grow!!
And so on Friday 29th April at 6.30pm we had our public event. A great crowd turned up in the village. Once again David Kinahan provided his fabulous sound system – David is very kind to the school always. The sun shone and we had many visiting Saints and scholars including St Declan from Leinster House, St Kathleen from Knockbridge, St Mary fr
om the Little Road, St Pamela, patron saint of Canada, Sister Ann and Brother Richard from Blackrock!! We honoured our saints, punished the sinner (Mr Mulligan!!) with a sponging in the Contemplation Seat, showed off our herbs, fruits, vegetables and flowers before all our children, families and visitors planted them in a planting “rave”. Afterwards we had a feast with food kindly provided by the parents from 3rd class. Ms Lambert even made some of her famous herbal tea. It went down very well!! Of course no party would be complete without a dance and we have some great dancers in Dromiskin!! Click HERE for pictures of our event. Click Irish TV footage to see Louth Matters. The footage from Dromiskin begins the second half of the show.
We made sure our evening was well publicised. Gene Yore from the Dundalk Democrat was there along with photographer Arthur Kinahan. Irish TV attended and footage of our Eco Tribes event was shown all over the world!! We also put our photos on the website. There was a full page spread in the Democrat which looked fantastic.
Now we look forward to the visit from the judges to tell them all about our project