In the context of the program Geo Circle we started the project 'Beegarden and Circularity'.

This project is about circular economy as it's main goal. In the school year 2018-2019 we started by brainstorming with a group of teachers about the topic of the project. First, we wanted to start a vegetable garden to provide our canteen with food that can be sold. But then we would have to invest a lot of time to maintain the garden. And by that time we were only with 4 teachers and no students yet. We concluded that we were interested in creating a certain garden and since wild bees are very endangered all over the world, we wanted to focus on the bees. We found a bee specialist, who wanted to advise and help us with the project. She came with the idea that the bees could be our main subject, since they are quite circular themselves.

Bees make their nests from all sorts of material (like bricks, tiles, wood, plastic, etc.) and are thereby giving these materials a different and new purpose. Then we started creating a garden to provide for food and nesting areas for the bees to let their numbers grow.

In that time the school wanted to remove the smoking area from the school grounds. Therefore, all the bricks of that area had to be removed. We used these bricks to make tiny walls on both sides of the path through our garden. In this way, we reused the bricks in a different way. Since certain bee species can use the holes in the walls to make nests. We asked parents of the students and other teachers, whether they had garden tools for us instead of buying them new. In the future, we are planning to also ask teachers and parents for plants to put in our garden.

The second year of the project we decided, we were ready to expand the bee garden with fruit trees. We want to use the fruits from these trees to be sold at our canteen. This makes the garden even more circular. And this integrates the wild bees as well, since they can pollinate the flowers of the trees to make the fruits.