Cooran State School is sponsored by Slow Food Noosa Kitchen Garden Project. 

The whole school is involved in the Edible Kitchen Garden project and the community, not just the school community, have been following the progress of the garden and also supporting it.  There is a real sense of community.

I teach at the school once a fortnight and have a team of parents that help me on those days, this is for 2 reasons

a) to train the parents so that they can garden with the students the weeks I'm not there and

 b) to increase the numbers of students we can have in the garden at each session,  the more adults the more students that are able to participant. 

 Set up day was 7th August and many of the local businesses and families contributed to the successful day, in fact nearly everything was donated and our set up costs were less than $500, which isn't much for a highly productive organic garden set up. 

Set up day was a hive of activity with many parents coming for a couple of hours or the whole day.  The local landscape business was on call in case we needed any other supplies delivered, of which they donated.  The tuckshop convenor, with help from the groundsman, worked tirelessly collecting beautiful big rocks from his property.  The rocks, especially on our Herb spiral, are a real feature of the garden.  Those man were unstoppable on the day, of which we are very grateful.

All students worked hard on the day but the preps were the solid workers of the day.  I would give them their jobs and off they went soaking and laying newspaper, spreading minerals, moving small rocks, spreading compost and watering.  They were so good, we got them back for the last hour again to help us complete the garden.

By the end of August we had hundreds of seedlings planted, plus herbs and seeds. 2 weeks later, I couldn't believe how much those plants and seeds had grown and in 4 weeks we had to harvest most of the lettuces and asian greens and also about 27 zucchinis, absolutely amazing for 3 weeks growth. 

Our food is totally organic and has had its fair share of challenges with hot, dry weather, but we still have achieve remarkable results.