sustainability | Cambusbarron Village Nursery

We are delighted to report that we have now received an updated Preliminary Ecological Appraisal of our outdoor nursery site.

The report states that “There was no field evidence of protected species found during the survey”. The report contains an Ecological Constraints and Opportunities Plan which will guide our development. This will include making sure good practice is followed in relation to

removing any non-native species (Spanish bluebells and montbretia are noted as examples)
protecting plant species (native bluebells for example should be retained)
protecting nesting birds
installing root protection areas for trees and
making sure any lighting doesn’t negatively impact on commuting or foraging bats.

There are several ecological enhancements suggested such as creating a wildflower meadow, making hibernacula from deadwood, retaining and creating wetlands, thinning woodland to encourage the under storey to develop and installing bird and bat boxes. These are exciting suggestions and challenges and we look forward to developing these with our children.

The report can be read in full here.

At Playgroup we are aware that our role in children’s early years goes beyond the direct and explicit learning opportunities we provide. We also influence them through our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. This is particularly significant when we think about the influences we have on their understanding of and attitude towards nature, the environment and the development of a sustainable world.

Our woodland play sessions are an ideal platform for us as adults to encourage our children to develop respect and responsibility for nature and the natural environment. In the playroom we have also been encouraging children to recycle paper and plastic bottles while we also compost our food waste.

More recently we have started creating ecobricks. These are plastic bottles we are filling with the single use plastics which cannot be recycled. The plan is to collect all the single use plastic in playgroup so, for example, the wrappers on fruit we buy, the plastic wrappers some of our mail us delivered in etc. The children are already enjoying using scissors to cut these in to small pieces and then stuffing them into a plastic bottle. We plan to monitor how long it takes to fill each bottle.

Although you will see many creative projects for benches, stools and igloos made from ecobricks and indeed, we may at some point attempt to make some of these, the initial aim of this project is to develop an awareness of the amount of single use plastics we are in contact with every day. Over time we would hope to see that our children develop a better understanding of, and attitude towards, issues of sustainability.