Student Council: Greening TCI Month Tree Planting Project

This month is Greening Turks and Caicos Islands Month and, in honour of that, the British West Indies Collegiate Student Council has been busy trying to encourage students and their families to adopt the habit of taking reusable bags to the supermarket, as well as doing our bit for the environment by planting some more trees in our school grounds!

A couple of years ago, the Turks and Caicos Islands Department of Environment and Coastal Resources, DECR, gave us enough saplings for each of our Form groups to have their own tree to take care of. This week, Amy Avenant from DECR once again came into school to help with the next stage of this project: replanting!

A selection of representatives from every Form class volunteered to be part of the planting group on Wednesday, and they each had the opportunity to present their Form’s tree to Amy as she toured our grounds. Before beginning the tour of the existing plants, Amy gave a talk explaining the new saplings that she had brought for us this year – one lucky class is now going to have a fragrant Frangipani to take care of! When they presented their current tree to the group, the representatives were asked to decide if they thought their shrub needed a larger space, and therefore would need to be replanted. With advice from Amy, the students then chose a new location for the plant or took advice on how to care for their tree in the future.

Amy congratulated many of the Form classes on the fantastic progress in the growth of the trees (although the class with the little lignum which is looking rather sickly were instructed to give this usually hardy tree some tlc – fingers crossed we can revive it!).

For many students the most surprising part of the afternoon was possibly when they were offered some leaves to taste from the healthy Moringa tree (being taken care of by Year 11), I’m not sure they all appreciated the flavour! Amy then explained many of the properties of this ‘tree of life’ and the benefits it is bringing to people in many parts of the world. We are lucky to have some right here in our grounds!

This tree project continues and the British West Indies Collegiate Student Council will be looking for some help to dig holes in our garden for the trees that need to be moved: so, any parents or senior students who could lend a hand with this heavy work, or could donate a shovel to the Student Council, are asked to contact Miss Rankin as soon as possible: trankin@bwic.tc. Thank you!

Let’s help to keep TCI ‘beautiful by nature’ : reduce – reuse – recycle 