St Mary's Catholic School Georges Hall Garden/Cooking Mentor

Students from Year 2 to Year 6 at St Mary’s Catholic Primary Georges Hall have engaged Stewardship Leaders to work with an outside mentor to promote sustainable gardens. The gardens in the the school began with a single garden bed and gift of a worm farm from the council but has now grown to 15 garden beds to tend. Students work with a mentor to nurture seedlings to grow many vegetables and herbs. The harvested vegetables are sold to fund the purchase of more seedlings for the garden.

Through this process the students have learnt a lot about garden care including companion planting to encourage plant growth and make the use of natural insecticides under the guidance of the garden mentor. The students have engaged in composting and have enjoyed the gift from the council of native stingless bees to encourage pollination of the plants. The garden includes rainbow chard, lemongrass, celery, snow peas, marigolds to repel caterpillar, sunflowers, beetroot, corn, strawberries, eggplant, cucumber,  tomatoes, broad beans, cos lettuce, thyme and flowers.

The Kindergarten children are usually having fun in the garden, picking cherry tomatoes and strawberries and eating them.

This year we have made a partnership with OzHarvest to incorporate a Cooking program into Stage Three. Students can access our organic produce in their healthy recipes they will cook as part of  their STEM unit of work in Stage Three in Term Three.

It feels so important to nurture the skills of sustainable gardening with the citizens of the future. Our planet needs it.