Food Gardens for Our School Children

WaterUps for Schools & ELCS

Keep your school garden alive over the holidays

The importance of food and herb gardens in schools

 

School gardens are important for teaching children where food comes from. Increasingly with food scarcity in many families, and 13.6% of Australians living below the poverty line, knowing how to grow food is an important life skill to master.

Compared to seventy years ago, more than two-thirds of Australians now live in a capital city with the urban sprawl of our cities taking up once was valuable land used for market gardens and quarter-acre home blocks.

For many children today, fruit and vegetables come from the supermarket – they don’t have any lived experience of growing food nor food production. Plus, they are losing the connection to land which can be a valuable anchor for people as they go through life.
This is why across ELC and school initiatives like Nature Play, Recycling and edible gardens are taking off.

 

Creating and maintaining gardens helps students to develop knowledge and skills for sustainable living, and for studying how we can meet human needs while preserving the environment for future generations. Practical activities in garden design, planting and harvesting, can be linked to a range of curriculum areas including science, arts, literacy, and numeracy.

Quote from NSW Government Office of Environment & Heritage

Involving students in food gardens is a rewarding and educational experience with academic, social and environmental benefits.

Sustainable Schools NSW

WaterUps® provides the ideal solution for schools looking to implement vegetable gardens and sensory herb gardens.

Why use WaterUps?

  • Our WaterUps wicking beds use 80% of the water of above ground irrigation system, meaning less water and time is needed to water and maintain a garden.
  • Keep your school garden alive and watered during holidays when you’re not there, thanks to our unique wicking watering system which will ensure plants will mostly survive
  • The WaterUps team can provide guidance in fund raising for your school or ELC garden and can help with identifying and accessing appropriate grant funding.

In some locations, WaterUps has links with organisations that can provide ongoing advice and assistance in maintaining your school garden, e.g., in NSW, this is Sydney Pocket City Farms and Wollongong Green Connect.

A guide to setting up your School Vegetable Garden with WaterUps

To see how Trinity Grammar School in Sydney incorporated their Green Patches into the curriculum, watch the video below put together by their Sustainability Teacher, Mel Bargwanna.