Our Sustainable Gardens

Garden News – June 2007

The Water-Wise Gardens planted by last year’s Grade 5/6’s are starting to look established now.  Autumn and Spring are the two main growth times for native plants, and following the recent rain our new gardens should really fill out.  A big Thank you to the Grade 3/ 4 Water Warriors, who have been saving the water that falls unused from the drinking fountains. This is the only extra water the plants are getting now: last week over 400 litres of water was saved – what a fantastic effort!

Take a walk around the Indigenous Grassland Garden on the Electra Street fence and you can see how the plants have grown.  The groundcover with the very small, greyish, furry-looking leaves is called Enchylaena tomentosa: it has small red or yellow berries on it at the moment.  If you would like to carefully collect these berries and plant them under the mulch in other parts of the garden, we can spread this pretty little groundcover around a little.

The Casuarinas in the Reflective Shade Garden between the Library and Hall are growing really fast – less than a year ago they were only 15 – 20 cm tall.  How big is the tallest now?  The Golden Rain Trees near the Library door have also grown beautifully. Unfortunately they have become possum-food in the last few weeks.  Even though possums are very cute and we all love them, I am going to get some plastic snakes to try and deter them from eating these trees.

The plants in the Bird Sanctuary garden beds on the Music-room side of the Hall need to grow some more before they will attract the lorikeets and rosellas which are often feeding in the gum trees around the school.  Thank you to all the students for staying off these beds – that is the main reason they look so lovely now.

Back