North Arm Primary School They already had a vegie garden and chooks.  The teacher from North Arm School Fiona Ball, who asked me to come and run a short program at the school, was the very person who had taught me all about the edible school gardens program. We had worked together at Nambour State School setting up their garden, and here she was, asking me to come to her school.  I asked WHY? and the answer did make sense - sometimes you need someone from outside your school community to 'fire up' school projects and that was all they needed.

It was another short term project - about 4 visits including set up.  We were using borders that were already in the garden just redesigning and adding more features such as herb spirals and a worm bath.

All year levels were involved with a long term view of having 'buddies' so that the older kids could teach the younger ones.  It was complicated having all age groups together as that meant lots of little kids needing 1 on 1 assistance but the work got done. 

Perhaps in future, we should teach the older students first (Year 5 upwards) then they can buddy up with the lower primary students.

Parents are very involved with the garden and teachers are also using it.


Note from Leonie:

As the Edible School Gardens program is being developed and constantly improved, it is important that I look back on each school and evaluate how the program ran in that school and if it could have been done differently to make it more successful.   Here I talk honestly about all those things that could have been done differently so that hopefully you won't make the same mistakes.