WellBeing: Kitchen Gardens

PLANET kitchen garden

IT’S NOT JUST THE SEEDLINGS PLANTED BY LITTLE HANDS THAT WILL GROW AND FLOURISH IN STEPHANIE ALEXANDER’S KITCHEN GARDEN PROGRAM, BUT THE KIDS THAT GET INVOLVED IN CULTIVATING AND PREPARING THEIR OWN MEALS.

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BY CASSIE WHITE

50 wellbeing.com.au

li Gould would never have imagined that fennel and artichoke-heart juice would be among her 10-year-old daughter Christa’s list of favourite foods.

Nor did she think Christa would regularly cook delicious and healthy meals for the family from foods she had grown herself.

But for the past two years, Christa has been involved in Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Program through her school, Collingwood College. The pioneering initiative teaches primary students how to grow and harvest food from their very own school garden, then prepare nutritious meals for themselves from scratch.

Since its humble beginnings in 2001, the Kitchen Garden Program now runs in 180 schools around Australia and has helped thousands of children between the ages of eight and 12 discover a passion and curiosity for the food they eat.

From lesson one, Gould says, Christa was so excited that she immediately began making her mark on the kitchen at home.

“She’d start out with simple things like making the dressings for salads. Now she’s even attempting to make her own pasta and has cooked plenty of full meals, which include entree, main and dessert,” she says.

“Christa will also make really beautiful, brightly coloured salads full of fresh herbs and eggplant; amazing buttery chives with mushrooms; gnocchi with amazing herb sauces — stuff that requires quite highlevel preparation.”

Christa, who wants to be a chef when i^[Éi ebZ[h" YWd dem YedÒZ[djbo cWa[ Nanna’s chicken parcels or herb bolognaise for the family and has even created her own carrot dip recipe using the blender. “I love working in the kitchen ... and I think it’s better growing your own food than buying it because you know more about the food’s name and how long it takes to grow,” she says. “I eat much healthier now, with more salads and vegetables, and I’m very happy that we got to do cooking.”

It’s exactly these kinds of stories that cook, food writer and restaurateur Alexander loves to hear, because they serve as proof that her healthy eating message is spreading beyond

school grounds and into the kitchen at home. “The children who are engaged in the program go home and talk like mad about it to their parents and grandparents,” she says.

“We hear a lot about small gardens starting up at home. The most common remarks from parents are about how their children are much more interested in the shopping, want to help in the kitchen and are more willing to try something they’ve previously rejected because they’ve actually had the experience of growing and handling this product at school.”

But it’s not just about cooking and gardening. Alexander wants children to have a positive attitude to food, plus appreciate and respect where it comes from, all while strengthening relationships with each other.

“It’s also about making connections with the natural world; understanding how to work together in a group; understanding how to solve problems, how to think about the care that goes into the garden and how to respect food that’s on the plate,” she says. “The amazing thing, which is hard to convey, is that all of these things that are quite subtle and relatively sophisticated concepts are communicated to the children just by the hands-on activities that they’re doing.”

It’s not unusual for children to teach their parents a thing or two in the kitchen that they’ve learned at school. The passion and excitement they bring home can really renew a spark in parents when creating meals themselves. “Christa’s brought herbs into the kitchen that I wouldn’t necessarily have used before,” Gould says, “and she’s got me excited about using our blender again by making a lovely dessert with peaches blended into this beautiful mousse. But she generally makes me stay out of the kitchen while she cooks. I’m obviously around in case she needs me, but she likes to really control her own space and so kicks me out.

She makes a procession of dishes that all need to be set up really nicely on the plate and then she brings it over to us.”

It’s that amount of effort and love put in by such a young girl that can really change family dynamics and make mealtimes

such special events for families. “The whole experience around the meal is really beautiful and we all respect it a lot,” Gould says. “We’ve always made mealtimes top priority to spend time talking, but there’s a whole lot of positive language around the dinner table when Christa has cooked.

Even from her little sister there’s a lot of appreciation and praise, so it’s a really beautiful time.

“We also talk about where the food has come from, so it’s an educational time as well. Then there’s the appreciation for the animals that might have gone into it and even for the farmers. We use it as a multifaceted event.”

Alexander agrees that enjoying family mealtimes should be made a top priority if parents want their children to have a broad _dj[h[ij _d \eeZ WdZ ÓWlekh" [l[d _\ _jÉi dej

Children don’t need to be part of the school-based program for families to start a kitchen garden at home. possible every evening. “I think it’s critically important if a family wants to produce children who want to share what’s happened to them during the day, and if parents want to show children they think their lives are important and what they’ve got to say is important,” she says. “I’m aware that many families have all sorts of sporting and other commitments, which means it possibly can’t happen every night, but I think it has to be a regular family commitment. Then it becomes a treasured time and I think you’ll ÒdZ j^Wj m^[d j^Wj ^Wff[di _d W \Wc_bo _j continues on to the next generation, too.”

That’s really the key to the Kitchen Garden Program: teaching children a set of skills they’ll have for life and pass down to their own families. But children don’t need to be part of the school-based program for families to start a kitchen garden at home. And if wellbeing.com.au 51

PLANET kitchen garden

you live in an apartment or just don’t have enough space for a vegetable patch, there’s always something you can grow. Alexander h[Yecc[dZi ÒdZ_d] ekj m^Wj \eeZi Wh[ X[ij for your climate, then planting something j^Wj ]hemi gk_Yabo Wj Òhij ie Y^_bZh[d m_bb ieed i[[ j^[ X[d[Òji e\ j^[_h ^WdZ_meha$ “If you live in an apartment with a sunny balcony you can always have two or three pots,” she says. If there’s a bit more space you can have a single corrugated iron bed or you can dig up a square metre of lawn.

“Cherry tomatoes and broadbeans grow quickly, while herbs are always fabulous.

In our climate herbs are always around.

“It’s quite nice for kids to have the magic of putting a seed into a pot then watching it grow. So I’d say to parents, talk to your kids

about growth, get some herbs and use them.”

Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Companion has become a bible of sorts, not only for parents wanting to garden with children but for anyone who just wants to grow and cook their own food from the ground up. “I’ve written quite a long section on gardening with children and being in the kitchen with children,” she says. “I’ve tried to say everything that’s occurred to me and everything that I’ve observed about how to keep kids interested and make sure they have a really good time.”

Alexander’s biggest message when gardening and cooking with children is to

“A four-year-old can stand on a stool next to Mum or Dad and help spread dip on a biscuit, or help stir when a cake is being made. Then as they get a little older they can put some of the mixture in cupcakes, help make salads or perhaps cut a cherry tomato.”

make it fun. Whether you have a simple herb collection or an extensive vegetable garden, she says the most important thing is that everyone has a great time. “The thing I stress over and over again is that it’s unrealistic for parents to think their children are automatically going to become great gardeners and great cooks who are _dj[h[ij[Z _d kdkikWb ÓWlekhi _\ fWh[dji sit on their bottoms and don’t do any of these activities themselves or are very picky with what they eat,” she says. “It has to be something that’s a priority and is of high value to the family. Those families where it has high value get such a reward out of it because it’s such a fun thing to do together, and you can just watch these kids’ capacity almost growing by the day.”

For the Gould family, taking a hands-on approach is the best way to not just keep the children interested but also teach them to appreciate how their food actually grows.

“It’s good for them to really understand where potatoes come from by digging them up, getting their hands dirty, washing them off and chopping them up all the way through to eating,” Gould says.

“Parents can take their kids into the garden and show them all the different

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“What does it matter if there’s an egg on j^[ Óeeh5 7 X_j e\ Óekh if_bb[Z eh j^[ c_ba jug getting tipped over will happen and it shouldn’t be seen as terribly important.”

herbs, then send them out the next day with a bowl and some scissors to chop some off for the sauce. Certainly, for my six-year-old who hasn’t yet started the Kitchen Garden Program, Christa and I both need to be creative in how we bring her into the recipes.

She loves to do a lot more of the manual tasks. like mixing and collecting the leaves and tomatoes when they’re in season.”

Guiding and encouraging really young Y^_bZh[d m_bb ^[bf Xk_bZ j^[_h YedÒZ[dY[ _d all aspects around preparing food and sets them up to extend on those skills when they get older. Teaching new things in the kitchen as kids become more able will also help maintain their interest.

“Parents need to be realistic about what kids are capable of,” Alexander says. “A fouryear-old can stand on a stool next to Mum or Dad and help spread dip on a biscuit, or help stir when a cake is being made. Then as they get a little older they can put some of the mixture in cupcakes, help make salads or perhaps cut a cherry tomato. They really are very capable by the time they’re eight, nine and 10 years old. If they’re given that responsibility with someone standing by to help with boiling water or to put things in hot ovens, it’s great for kids to feel like they’re doing things together.”

Of course, it’s important for parents to let go a little in their kitchens and not stress too much about the inevitable accidents that will happen when cooking with kids.

“We’ve had a couple of catastrophes,” Gould says, “but most of the time things work out wonderfully. Christa was given a pasta maker and, of course, I had to sit on 54 wellbeing.com.au

the couch while she attempted to make it. I jh_[Z je ijWo WmWo Xkj fWijWÉi h[Wbbo Z_\ÒYkbj to make and we ended up with dough over every surface of the kitchen.”

“If you’re learning anything, there’s always a learning curve,” explains Alexander. “What Ze[i _j cWjj[h _\ j^[h[Éi Wd []] ed j^[ Óeeh5 7 X_j e\ Óekh if_bb[Z" eh j^[ c_ba `k] ][jj_d] tipped over will happen and it shouldn’t be seen as terribly important. It’s much more important that the child loves learning how to make pikelets and can do it on their own rather than Mum getting freaked out about W X_j e\ Óekh ed j^[ X[dY^$Ç Gould, like many parents, works outside the home and knows how hectic life can get trying to raise a young family plus earn a living. It’s for this reason that many parents feel overwhelmed by the thought of tending to a home garden as well, but she says it doesn’t have to create a large workload. “It’s really just the initial start-up: spending a day getting everything in, getting the soil right and composting,” she says. “But after that, it really just takes 10 minutes every few days to keep it up.”

To Alexander, it’s a question of priority and a willingness to learn in the garden and kitchen. And she stresses that you don’t need to start off big. “To have an extensive garden takes a huge amount of time, but \eh W \Wc_bo e\ \ekh eh Òl[ f[efb[ m^e `kij want to grow some beans or tomatoes, or if you want to have fresh basil or parsley, that doesn’t take a lot of time,” she says. “When people say they don’t have time to cook I think that what they’re really saying is, ‘I don’t know how.’ I can make a meal in 10 minutes and it’s not just because I’m a cook.

It’s just a misunderstanding that it has to be a great production. All it takes is a little bit of planning and a little bit of interest.”

Watching children absorb those valuable skills gives Alexander the greatest pleasure when she visits Kitchen Garden schools around the country. “It’s impossible to exaggerate how wonderful that is and how

varied it is,” she says. “You just see so many enthusiastic faces and the children are bursting to tell you what they’ve been doing — it’s just lovely. The spaces they work in, both the kitchen and the garden, are usually the most beautiful parts of the school.”

Between 2008 and 2012, the Australian Government is making available $66,000 grants in a series of rounds to primary schools, including disability schools, that want to be part of the Kitchen Garden Program. To be eligible, schools are asked to integrate the program into their curriculum and employ a part-time kitchen specialist and gardener. The fourth round of funding opens in May and Alexander recommends fWh[dji WdZ fh_dY_fWbi Òhij l_i_j iY^eebi that have it up and running. “It’d be great for parents who have children in primary school to get on our website and create a bit of parent power to push for this program to be incorporated into their primary school,” she says. “The more schools that apply, the more pressure we’ll put on the government for more grants.”

Although the application process is extensive and schools are asked to draw on some of their own resources to sustain it, 10-year-old Christa is proof that children are learning worthwhile skills that they’ll take into adulthood. “Every time the bell rings and it’s time for cooking, my friends and I get so excited and rush to the kitchen,” she says.

“I’m really happy that I got to join the program because usually I wouldn’t do things in the kitchen. I used to sometimes help Mum with cakes but I don’t think I would have done cooking if I didn’t do the program at school.”

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