That enthusiasm dialled up to near maximum earlier this week when they learned their garden was one of 10 winner’s nationwide in the inaugural Keep New Zealand Beautiful Kai Garden Competition.
"It’s pretty cool," said Toby.
"It’s amazing," added Ollie. "We just started it this year but it’s grown a lot."
The competition gave schools and early childhood education providers across the country the opportunity to create a small kai and rongoa garden to help pupils develop a greater understanding of the natural world and to gain hands-on gardening experience.
Alexandra Primary School recently received a Ministry of Education grant to refresh its ageing buildings, and used that as an opportunity to set aside a much larger space for their kai garden, and to include a larger diversity of plants.
Garden Club co-ordinator Danielle Dunn said the school’s food forest concept meant they had created a diverse and sustainable garden system.
"It’s an incredibly rich resource which will serve to expand our tamariki’s learning opportunities and bless our community as the forest layers and canopy matures, and the harvest expands in the years to come.
"We think creating a food forest is very relevant for the times we are living through with climate change and economic pressures making food insecurity more commonplace.
"Our vision is to create a garden using food forest permaculture principles to produce a bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables to inspire, connect and share with our community."
The concept relied on including multiple layers of food-producing plants, and the 200sqm garden included a wide variety of fruit trees, berry bushes, and perennial and annual vegetables.
These were supplemented with a range of companion plants including herbs, flowers and medicinal plants with different types of root systems to create a living mulch which would diversify soil life.
The materials used for the garden edging, planter boxes and archways included local schist, macrocarpa, compost made by the school and even offcuts of steel hydro dam powerstation pipe.
This was the first year of the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Kai Garden Competition, and over 80 design submissions were received.
The competition aimed to benefit students through academic achievement, healthy eating concepts, environmental kaitiakitanga, and building a connection with nature and cultural roots.
The 10 winning schools were selected to receive $1,000 each, to put towards building a garden that beautified and enhanced their grounds, with a further $500 on completion to put towards its ongoing care.
By Tracie Barrett
