Our Sustainable Gardens

Garden News – September 2009

Now that Spring is here, what a great time for a walk around our gardens! As the Grade 1/2 classes have been so busy in their Vegetable Gardens; perhaps we will start there. These gardens are on the Parker Street boundary, next to the Bluestone building. We have had two planting sessions: (the possums ate a lot of our first seedlings!) We have since tried to plant vegetables that possums don't like to eat - celery, onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots, radishes and Jerusalem artichokes seem to be the best. If you know a Grade 1/2 student, ask them about their garden; each garden bed has different vegies in it.
Now walk towards the hall, between the buildings, until you almost reach the water tanks. The small garden on your left is one of two Bird Sanctuary Gardens. (The other is presently inside the building site). Plants for this garden, which was started in 2006, were mostly chosen from the Gould League Website List of 10 best bird attracting plants. They also attract butterflies at this time of year.
On the other side of the breezeway is the Reflective Shade Garden. Thanks to our Nestle Grant last year, we extended this area with the zig-zag seating between the two buildings. The Casuarina trees here were only 20cm tall when planted less than three years ago! Now that they are taller, they create a lovely woodland feeling, with the enclosing Goodenia and Dodonea bushes around the edges. If you walk through this area you come to the Indigenous Grassland Garden. This is the largest of our individual gardens; but it is still small enough to be a domestic garden. Indigenous plants are those that originate in the local area, so they are the plants which were living here before European settlement, and which support local insect and animal life. Grade 5/6 students installed this garden, including putting in the garden edging and paths, mulch and plants, and even hand-making the rocks which you can see in the dry creek bed. Please walk on the paths or in the creekbed - trampling very quickly kills these plants. Many of them have been flowering over the last few weeks - have you noticed the creamy flowers of the clematis on the fence? If you look around you may also see the purple flowers of the Indigofera, white Basalt Daisies, pink Native Geraniums, yellow Bubine Lillies and Cassias.
The Stepping Stone Path leads from this garden to the Italian Garden - the most-used garden in the school! Signora's Italian classes harvest the herbs to use in pizzas, scones and pasta sauces, and make lovely water colour paintings of this garden. From the Verandah of the Italian room, you can look out over the herb garden beds, the Rosemary hedge and the Olive Grove, which is underplanted with Italian Lavender.
Across the Driveway in front of the Administration Building is the Admin. Entry Garden, which is flowering beautifully. The grade 3/4 students who grew these African Daisies from cuttings last year must feel really proud of this garden! If you walk along the paving almost to the door, you will find a little mulch path on the left which winds around between the grasses and lilies, under the trees. These plants were donated by Quest Apartments last year and very successfully planted by some Grade 5/6's - it is the only garden we've put in where every single plant survived!

Back