Pupils from Pembroke School Eco Club have been helping to clear up their school site by restoring a neglected pond, creating habitats and sowing wildflower meadows.

With funding from the Welsh Assembly Government's Local Environmental Quality Grant Programme, Pembroke School and Green Links Community Interest Company have been able to improve these sites by removing the rubbish and overgrown vegetation and improving access to the site.

The eco club has been laying paths around the pond, creating mosaics, planting sensory flowers in a restored garden and sowing wildflower seeds to create meadows.

This term they will be constructing a living willow sculpture that will enhance the garden.

They have installed habitat for solitary bees, hedgehogs, frogs, insects and birds to increase the biodiversity of the area and to assist the pollination of wildflowers.

The eco club has been increasing in numbers over the last year thanks to the leadership of Gena Hamilton, who works in the English as an Additional Language Unit at the school.

She offers her spare time to organise the eco club whose members range from Year 7 to Sixth Form.

She says: "The children love working outside. They get so much satisfaction from knowing that they have improved their environment for wildlife and for other people."

Gena has been assisted by Jo Brookman from Green Links, an organisation that offers vocational training to young people at Pembroke School and with other organisations who help people into employment.

Eco club members want to improve their environment and love to learn more about wildlife. It is their aim to see what colonises the newly restored pond and this term they will be erecting a pond-dipping platform so they can discover what lives in the water. The pond can then be used as an attractive and safe area for study by other classes at the school.

If your child would like to join the eco club, they meet at 3.15 pm on Wednesdays in the art department.