Students reap what they sow in Dairy Flat School gardens

Front, from left, Kaitlin Lucas and Holly Druce and Vincent Baldwin (back) harvest the first potatoes from the Dairy Flat School gardens.

Dairy Flat School is taking nothing for granted when it comes to teaching children about growing their own fresh food.Although at a rural school you might expect children to have a little experience of home grown food or food production, principal Debbie Marshall says that’s not always the case.

“Even though many families are from lifestyle blocks, there is quite a bit of variation in how much they know about plants and growing food,” she says.

Debbie says the school has always had an environmental focus but last year it was rejuvenated, with gardens created next to classrooms where the children, staff and parents could enjoy them.

The school’s worm bins were also revitalised, providing plenty of plant food.

Pupils were involved in ideas for creative garden design, and how to make gardens without a lot of space – this included planting into recycled plastic bottles and mounting them on a wall, and turning pallets into vertical gardens.

“The idea was to make the gardens in a central place where there would be more engagement with them, and that has worked well,” Debbie says. “We wanted to imagine how people can make gardens when they live in an urban environment without a large plot of land so many of the gardens used wall space.”

Learning about the connection between garden and kitchen was also important, with the children making salads, wraps and stirfries from produce grown at school.

Many of the plants were annuals and they were taken home at the end of last term or left to tough it out over the summer.

The gardens will be replanted this term, with some of the new plants grown from seeds harvested by the children.

This year the focus will be on insects in the garden.

Debbie says the school believes it’s important to teach children about growing their own food.

“There’s a lot more awareness of that, especially after those imported berries with Hepatitis A,” she says.