Rotary Dunedin Central president April Eden, a former school parent, said the large grounds and gardens had been central to the Bradford School slogan, "a little bit of country in the heart of the city".
"There were fabulous gardens, fruit trees and chickens — the kids loved it," Mrs Eden said.
"The teachers are too busy dealing with day-to-day school life and don’t have the time to take care of what are very large garden and orchard areas," she said.
"And that is a shame, because a lot of the children at Bradford School would really benefit from the experience of learning about gardening and growing food."
Having plenty of keen gardeners in the club, Rotary Dunedin Central made the offer of re-establishing the garden beds and cleaning up the site, as well as helping with ongoing community garden activities at the school.
"The school was very happy for us to come in and help, and so after a lot of planning and liaising with people in the community, we got stuck in over the school holidays with a working bee to clear the site," Mrs Eden said.
"It was a very big job, because the site was really overgrown, but it looks great afterwards."
The group had also had "amazing" help from local contractor Shane Maaka, of Save Money Skips, who gave up a whole weekend to clear gorse from a sloping part of the site.
Whitestone Contracting had also helped with clearing away the cleaned-up vegetation.
Discussions with others in the community, including Age Concern Otago and Dunedin city councillor Kevin Gilbert, had been helpful, garnering extra volunteers and connections for the project.
"We also have the National Women in Construction Association, who have offered to help by building things, such as garden borders and bench seats," Mrs Eden said.
Waitati-based fruit tree expert Jason Ross, of Habitate edible habitats, was also involved and would help teach key people how to prune and care for the on-site fruit trees.
The Otago Polytechnic Horticulture team had also offered to lead workshops on the propagation and worm farming aspects of the garden, as well as helping with seedlings.
"We are just thrilled with how many people and organisations have stepped up to help us — we are so grateful for all the support," Mrs Eden said.
The project had been funded through internal Rotary funding, with support from local businesses and a member, who owned the Maniototo Hardware Store, helping with some materials.
Now that the site has been cleared, planning is under way for the next steps and a further working bee will probably be held in the upcoming school holidays.
"We are also working on connecting with volunteers who would like to come in and help to run the garden and teach the children about gardening and working with produce," she said.
Dunedin Central Rotary would continue to have an active role in the garden project for the next couple of years then, once the garden was up and running, the club would look at handing it over to community-based volunteers.
"It is such an exciting project for us — it is nice to be working on something that will be of ongoing benefit to the community," Mrs Eden said.
