Eastbury Eco Update

Eco garden opening speech- by Gary King

It gives me great pleasure to say, welcome ladies and gentlemen to the grand opening of the Grand opening of the refurbished Eco garden. So, I guess it’s nice to see to see, to see you… (I see you’re all awake)Now, I’m quite sure the visitors, being our first guests to the refurbished Eco garden from outside the school, have one similar question on your minds, as do many students within Eastbury who have watched the Eco garden develop one step at a time: What is the objective behind making an “Eco garden” in the first place? This question was also pondered upon by students who became apart the Eco squad in order to contribute towards the refurbishment of the Eco garden and, I believe the Eco squad all had one unanimous answer. People living in urban areas, especially the younger generation, have unfortunately lost any valuable connection to the natural world due to the hustle and bustle of city lifestyle. In fact, in today’s times, it has become a more popular thing to grow fingernails rather than your 5-a-day.The Eco garden aims to re-connect people to the natural world by allowing everyone to appreciate the natural world through its visual beauty, learning basics ecological principles and providing a clean, safe leisure space. And, not surprisingly, as the Eco garden has become more polished, more students have requested time in the garden, for both lessons and volunteering to help maintain the garden, as visiting open natural environments are rare occurrences to many students. Student interaction with the Eco garden also links into a second objective of our team, which is to improve student’s understanding of science and geography concepts such as food chains, food webs, how climate effects and balances with wildlife, etc.In conclusion, I am not asking everyone to be out-and-about by next week, buying manure bags to grow vast expanses of vegetation or planning picnics every Saturday because frankly, we are living in Britain, not Barcelona and trying to plan anything involving with the environment is only for the strong-willed when you have British weather- the Eco squad found this out the hard way due to the absolutely horrid April showers of this year, we had to postpone the Eco garden opening by 2 months just give our crops the right time and conditions to grow.However, what I do want everyone to do is appreciate what the natural world has done and is doing for us by enjoying your evening at the Eastbury Eco garden. Thank you.