School Gardens

SCHOOL gardens GROWING YOUNG MINDS

School gardens can make lasting differences in the lives of children, with the lessons taught through these outdoor learning laboratories transcending gardening to impact children, their families, and entire communities for years to come.

School garden programs use typical gardening tasks, such as planning, planting, caring, and harvesting, to illustrate cultivation. Plants, insects, birds, and weather all become participants in the learning process. As a result, children are more engaged, more attentive, and more motivated to learn.

Perhaps more importantly, through school gardens, children experience the rewards of fresh produce and the process that goes into cultivating food to eat.

They learn to understand the natural growth of plants — from seeds to sprouts to flowers to fruits — and the impact that rain, drought, and other forces of nature have on plant life. Children learn first-hand the connection between nature, their own food supply, and the pollinators and other creatures their school garden ecosystem attracts and supports.

By their nature, school gardens also encourage teamwork, individual responsibility, and a commitment to success. Many gardens involve community volunteers, who assist students as they plant, tend, and learn. Increased interaction between children, teachers and volunteers encourages growth in interpersonal and cooperative skills that follow children throughout their lives.

Enabling Kids to Get Growing

Oke is an organisation that provides Kiwi kids the opportunity to learn life and social skills by introducing productive gardens into schools. By giving the kids the tools to learn, Oke empowers schools and communities to grow these skills, ultimately providing a better place for everyone.

Through Growing A Future, Oke delivers a garden to each school, enabling the kids, teachers, and local community to get growing. The garden is built through a community working bee (in just ONE day) and includes all that is required to make it sustainable; raised beds, greenhouse, composting solutions, kids’ tools, teacher tools, irrigation, fruit trees etc. Oke was founded by Paul Dickson who was introduced to the world of project management at the age of 16. “Over the next 20-plus

years I went on to work on projects from building a new raised garden bed in my own back garden to retrofitting a power station in South Africa,” he said.

After running a successful fundraiser, Dickson was approached by a local school who had a problem. The school wanted to start running a gardening programme for its students but had no garden, they wondered if one could be built with the charity funds.

“I thought, sure, that could probably be done in a day,” expressed Dickson, noting that the Principle at Papatoetoe West Primary School was amazed that it could be.

The charity also recognised what a great opportunity this was to bring a community together.

Before any of the kids have even planted a seed, they will have seen their new school garden being built by their parents, teachers, and local community. This makes the kids very proud and seeing the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into building the garden, they have a lot more respect for it and this encourages them to nurture everything in the garden.

Once the garden is built the kids begin to learn and develop into Mighty Kids. Yes, they can indeed grow a few veggies but there are so many more benefits…

• Kids learn the mighty chip comes from a potato. • Kids become the teachers and show

parents how to grow and use veggies at home. • The garden positively impacts mood and psychological wellbeing. • By encouraging communities to come together and share skills, the community as a whole benefits. • Providing a social platform where kids can just be kids and learn by getting down and dirty. • Increase life skills, increase levels of selfesteem / worth. • Kids develop hands-on skills that they might potentially be interested in pursuing in life later on. • Give kids the opportunity to get outside and interact with each other, sharing knowledge and building relationships. • Children growing up healthy and strong both physically and mentally, leading to a positive outlook / future

Paul Dickson, OKE founder

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• Provide financial skills by turning produce from the garden into profitable sales, which fund a sustainable garden. • An outdoor classroom is a great place to learn all kinds of topics from science to language. • Doesn’t pigeonhole kids like other activites – it doesn’t matter if you’re sporty, shy, top of the class or struggling with personal issues. Plants just want to be nurtured and have no bias towards anyone.

After creating the garden for Papatoetoe West, the next year, Oke helped Papatoetoe East and since then has since built gardens from Onehunga to Drury. Oke plans on implementing its Growing A Future initiative into primary schools across South Auckland and beyond over the next few years.

“The response has been incredible. Sometimes the new garden can be a little daunting, but once a school is over that initial hurdle, the rewards are huge.”

Dickson noted that while the charity has begun its journey in South Auckland – his local community – and with lower decile schools, its an initiative he believes should be in all schools throughout the country.

“It’s something that all students can benefit from, that all kids need. They start to learn the true value of food, the time it takes to grow something and about the entire food chain. Watching some students absolutely thrive in this environment is really special.”

Oke reaches out to funders and donors to find the funding for each garden (approximately $15,000) so that a school doesn’t pay a cent, this includes everything the school needs from flower beds to gardening tools – even watering cans.

“We have amazing suppliers we work with.”

The gardens are built by volunteers during Worker Bees – anyone can sign up on the Oke website to volunteer, you don’t have to be a gardening expert and it’s a great opportunity for adult learners too.

“Everyone can garden and develop the amazing life skills a garden can grow,” expressed Dickson.

“Just remember that seeds don’t grow into something special overnight, it takes preparation and time. Use these two things to develop your school garden and you’ll have something amazing for generations.”