SUSTAINABLE GARDENING AT SPRING GULLY PRIMARY SCHOOL.

Spring Gully Primary School has a garden project which encourages sustainable gardening. This garden is called the Mandala Garden because of the way it is arranged, using circles and circular patterns for garden beds.

Students maintain this garden, with the assistance of teachers.

The garden has a rainwater tank which can operate by gravity alone. Students also monitor rain fall, using a rain gauge and graphing results.

There is a henhouse, with hens laying eggs daily. These eggs are sold to the school community. The hens are fed from scraps collected in classrooms and chook pellets, paid for with money from egg sales. Students are involved in caring, feeding, watering, cleaning eggs and packing them for selling.

 There is a composting bin & a rotarycompost bin which are also filled with scraps collected from classrooms and garden waste.

 There are 3 wormerys, students developed and put these together.  Compost, castings and chook droppings are used on the garden beds when necessary.

The garden is planted with vegetables, flowers, sensory plants and recently a lemon tree was planted.

 Plans are in place to do further planting. The students have also created scarecrows which add a colourful and artistic element.

Mulching is an important part of this garden project to retain moisture. Various mulches have been experimented with including pebbles, shredded newspaper, straw and eucalyptus mulch.

Throughout the school we have icecream containers under each bubble tap to save water. Students collect this water daily and it is used in the Mandala Garden and other garden beds around the school.

Recycling of various material to add colour and features to the garden include; milo & coffee tins - made into lanterns, wire structures used to grow peas, recycled materials for scarecrows, various metal objects to make wind chimes, old wheel burrow as a planting box.

We have created much of the garden using resources available to us and also donations from our local community, such as chooks, plants, seeds and seedlings, and rocks.

These areas are linked into daily school work through literacy, maths, science etc. The students are involved in all areas, learning how to plant, growing cuttings and seedlings, maintaining, the importance on composting, and how to sustain a garden in our dry environment through compost and plant selection.

See the photo gallery for photos of this wonderful garden.

Recently we have had great news! Spring Gully Primary School was one of the lucky winners in The Planet Ark National Tree Day awards, winning$1000 for our school. This award was funded by the AMP Society, and will be used to fund further developments in our school garden.