Creating our best tomorrow

JOHN HENDERSON, YEAR 4 TEACHER

The Year 4 garden is the heartbeat of the Enviro program. It is rich with learning opportunities, and it is full of life! It demands our attention, so we take action every day. Our students nurture their garden, and in return, their garden nurtures them.

The Enviro space, which stretches from the Middle School Art building to the carpark, is part Indigenous garden, and part vegetable garden. A gentle stroll through the grounds will reward you with the calls of the superb fairy-wren, eastern spinebill, rainbow lorikeets, and sometimes even yellowtailed black cockatoos.

You will see trees, shrubs and grasses that were prolific throughout this region just two centuries ago; casuarinas, goodenia ovata, austral indigo, lomandra, clematis, wallaby grass, kangaroo apples and a variety of saltbushes. These birds and plants exist in this space because of our students and the curiosity and care they demonstrate on a daily basis. In the past few years, every Year 4 cohort has actioned a major revegetation or landscaping project. Last year’s students, upon returning from their final period of remote learning, started construction on the ‘Great River Road’ which stretches along the western escarpment of the garden. The road has become a feature for our students and helped transform a once barren hillside into a tranquil trail through the many Indigenous plants that are now

home to superb fairy-wrens and other important critters. This year, after enjoying the common brown butterflies in our garden in late summer and autumn, we decided to develop more butterfly and moth habitat. So, the Planning and Planting for More Moths and Butterflies Project was born!

Moths and butterflies bring colour, joy and proper pollinating action to any garden. Focusing on these creatures has provided the students with a window into the complexities of our living world. For example, common brown butterflies prefer to source their nectar from open flowers such as daisies, while their caterpillars nibble exclusively on grasses. So, earlier in the year, one thousand moth and butterfly attracting Indigenous plants were ordered from a local nursery, and in August and September the students became efficient planting machines! Local gardening expert, John King, joined us for the annual ‘Planting Day’ last term to kick start the process with our students. He refined our students’ horticultural techniques and unleashed them back into the garden. The first stop was the wallaby lawn, which our students began on Orientation Day last year when they harvested the seeds from established wallaby grasses and sprinkled them across a freshly cleared patch of soil. On Planting Day, students extended this lawn by planting dozens of seedlings, which have exploded with life amid the endless rain we’ve been receiving lately. Other corners of the garden were targeted and planted out by our excited, and excitable, horde of gardeners. Bare patches of soil next to vegetable gardens, under citrus trees, opposite seated areas, and lining the many walking trails… no space was untouchable for the hundreds of plants and grasses that required new homes. By the end of Planting Day, our students had made such a positive and powerful impact on their space. They had dramatically improved their natural environment, but there were still a few hundred plants left to put in the ground! Over the next few weeks, our focus returned to the Great River Road. Our students continued to ‘get their hands dirty’ as they lined the path with grasses and shrubs, as they extended the existing Indigenous islands of local plants that now scatter the landscape. The Year 4 question that guides our program is: “How can we create our best tomorrow?” Projects like these offer real and authentic learning experiences for our students. The connections they form with their natural surroundings, and with their peers, throughout place-based education like this is integral in developing kind, gentle and caring young souls. While our current cohort of students are almost at the end of their Year 4 adventure, we hope that their love of, and journey through, nature has only just begun. Next year, when they return to take a stroll through the same garden as Year 5 students, we hope they will enjoy seeing clouds of moths and butterflies taking delight in their hard work.