THE challenge of a Welsh slag heap proved no problem for experienced Bury teacher Janet Brady.

While her pupils were playing in the sun, Janet was getting her hands dirty on an unusual summer field research project.

It was her reward for winning one of only 15 awards handed out across the country by the environmental charity Earthwatch. She also won £125 for her school, to be spent possibly on a wildlife area, a walkway, or a recycling scheme.

Earthwatch's 'Cradle for Nature' project was designed to develop a green way of using trees to create new soils on barren wasteland left behind after opencast mining.

Janet stayed in a conference centre in Abergavenny to work on the Summer Sapling project. She had to collect data about the growth of the trees the team had planted there over a ten-year period, dig out and analyse soil samples and excavate tree roots. She also helped with a small mammal survey. When all the data is in, it will prove whether the method of intensive planting of trees to create new soil and new ecosystems really works.

Janet said: "On one side of the fence round the research area there were thousands of really healthy trees: rowan, alder, Scots pine and oak mostly. The soil there was good too.

"On the other side the bleak open moorland was in strong contrast: the soil was really thin and acidic and hardly anything grew. It looked to us as if already the 'cradle for nature' approach is really working."

Janet has worked in Bury schools for 20 years and is joining Bury and Whitefield Jewish School in Unsworth in September.