Our Sustainable Gardens

Garden News – July 2008

Time for another walk around our gardens!  We have one new garden to add to our regular walk:  our Veggie and Indigenous Foodplant Garden, located on the Parker Street boundary between the Bluestone and Administration buildings.  Perhaps we’ll start there.

Funding for this garden comes from PowerCor & CitiPower grant, which was administered by Landcare Australia.  Grade 5/6 students last year produced a film about our School’s Environmental programs, which won the award.  The garden edges were very kindly made from recycled sleepers, by parents at our working bee last term.  Students from grades 3 - 6 filled the beds with soil, then planted them as part of our Green Day Celebrations.  The vegies we planted are:  Celery, Onions, Carrots, Leeks, Rainbow Chard, and Peas. (The peas came up in the Pea-straw mulch!).  It is unfortunate that these vegies are so attractive to possums!  A Possum-Proof Fence will be added shortly…

The Indigenous foodplants which we have chosen for the Garden include the following:  Yam Daisies, the tubers of which were a staple food for local Aboriginal people; Midyim Berries and Riberries; a Macadamia tree (native to Queensland, but will grow and fruit here in Melbourne); and two native pepper trees, which are unusual  in that one plant is male and the other female!   Some of these plants are still small – please take care to only walk on the pathways.

The Italian Garden is a short walk away.  It is looking very wintry at the moment as most of the herbs slow down in the winter, but if you follow the Stepping Stone Path and enter the Indigenous Grassland Garden, you’ll see that the opposite is true for our indigenous plants – they take advantage of the cool weather and winter rain: they are growing and in many cases flowering too.  Being indigenous plants, the individual flowers are less startling than many garden plants – you have to make a bit more effort to appreciate their beauty!  One exception is Cassia artemisioides, a fine-leaved shrub with many bright yellow flowers.  We have a couple of these lovely shrubs, and although they are still small, one is flowering alongside the stepping stone path.  Can you spot it?

Thanks to six of our students, who planted nearly 200 new plants in this area last Wednesday.  They have funding from Nestle through a Hobson’s Bay project to encourage environmentally friendly gardens in schools. Walking between the two buildings, once among the Casuarinas, you are in the Reflective Shade Garden.  The most dramatic addition to this garden is the group of rainwater tanks, which now provide water to the toilets and garden.  After our recent rain, they are about 1/4 full.  The trees are continuing to grow strongly and this garden is developing a nice sense of enclosure.

Across the Breezeway are the two Bird Sanctuary beds.  The Grevilleas we planted - named “Superb”, have honestly not stopped flowering since we planted them two years ago.  Many birds visit these garden beds now (though not during play-time!), so they have been very successful in their purpose.  We will be consolidating these plants into one of the beds soon to make a space for another new garden.  Our school was fortunate enough to win a competition run by Melbourne Water, who will install a special Water Garden here, which uses rainwater runoff from the breezeway downpipes. Thanks once again to the Water Warriors for the extra water they save for our plants.  With so many Willy Kids active in so many projects, it’s no wonder the gardens look so fantastic.

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