St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Primary School

In their application to Wightlink’s Green Fund for Schools in 2022, St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Primary School told us:

“The school was gifted a piece of woodland at the rear of the property.  A pond with a viewing platform has been built in part of this area, in a small wooded space and what is missing now is the planting around the pond to create a nature wild haven that will bring a greater variety of insects and birds to the pond.

This is where the Wightlink Green Fund for Schools would come in! With appropriate, native planting the pond will become a wonderful place of a range of buzzing, crawling and swimming insects.”

After receiving the funds, the school children and teachers got to work.

“We used the donation to purchase plants for the ponds which at that point looked more like a puddle of water in a barren field.

Thanks to the Wightlink donation we have been able to inject the pond with native planting that is becoming very established. Even though we are heading into winter the pond is now thriving with lots of animal and insect life. We have ducks regularly on the pond and at night it now hums with wonderful dragonflies. Other insect life such as water boatmen and pond skaters are clearly to be seen. It will be fascinating to share with you the developments that happen in spring as we are really hopeful that we might get some tadpoles in the pond.”

We plan to revisit the school in the Spring and will post further updates here.