Philip

Kirtlestown School, though, has embraced outdoor learning to the point of building a classroom in the woods that is used every day, all year round.

Rosie Ambrose is the principal.

It's not a place for hijinks and acting the maggot, it is just a classroom in their minds.

Rosaline was already sold on the advantages of trees on her farm and has planted loads of borders.

Sarah's plan, though, identified a boggy area of potential phosphorus runoff and recommended more tree planting there, advice that Rosaline is grateful for.

And when they go back into the classroom then?

How many months of the year are you up here now?

I'll get to it, and then inevitably you end up not being able to get to it.

But farmers have somebody arriving at the door, selling them something or suggesting that they do something or insisting that they comply with something pretty much every day of the week.

They make them hardier in Wicklow, don't they?

How do you avoid just being another person?

While the Sitka Spruce book might have been a bit quiet about the ecological impact of monoculture coniferous plantations, Emma King thinks that there is some value in it for explaining to kids in areas of dense commercial forestry why the world around them looks like it does.

Sarah's a qualified scientist, but she's also from a farming family living in the catchment.

Boyne River's trust in this way is an authentic, ground-up community movement, and that is more persuasive to landowners than a visit from a state agency.

It allows the trust to approach those agencies and say, you need us to get the job done.

We're in Coran, in the polytunnel again.

Two months ago the school embarked on a lesson that isn't on the curriculum but perhaps should be.

How you can change the world around you.

They are surrounded by dense commercial plantations of conifers and decided for a bit of balance to create their own deciduous plantation.

Would it be fair to say that something that's organic, that arises within a community of people who have decided to bloom where they have planted themselves, has a much better chance of success than a top-down plan imposed by an agency of government?