Time for coldframes and Hoop house growing outside and going Ga-Ga in the classroom. 

To help teach about entrepreneurship Director Susan Richardson and Americorps VISTA Erik Kraemer dressed as Lady Ga-Ga.   The class is called Chance 2- for ‘at risk’ students and the partnership with Community Garden Partnership is called ‘Community Herbs’ where these students learn to use the agrarian skill base to improve their chances for employment. 

I have to say that they thought we were crazy- and we are:) 

Happy Holidays to the garden world!

Last Friday, 12th November, our garden was officially opened by Sophie Thomson (Gardening Australia) and Trea Surace. Over 150 invited guests, family and friends together with our students took part. The rain meant that the speeches and items took place in the hall but we were able to gather outside later for the ribbon cutting. Guests enjoyed morning tea which included dips made with herbs from our garden.

   

    

With the winter almost here, I’m glad to report that our greenhouse is finally complete! Thanks to the help of our Fiskars gift card, we were able to start the project in early September. There’s radiant tubing in the concrete floor which is heated by the two solar panels pictured above. Come Jan. this is where we’ll be starting our seedlings for next season.

May everyone stay warm this winter!

Elizabeth

After months of hard work the day of our garden opening was finally upon us! Everyone was really busy during the kinder session on the morning of Thursday 28th October. Lisa and the children were very busy cooking little treats to feed to all the special visitors. Parents Cristie and Kylie spent some time out in the garden just tidying everything up and putting in the last of the pebbles around the pavers. Over the last couple of kinder sessions the children have been doing paintings of flowers and plants and these were hung on the fences to add colour to our garden room. Although still just establishing, the small trees and plants were looking their best for the day.

To our great relief, it was nice and sunny in the afternoon. There had been rain forecast and this would have put a damper on the celebration. At 1:30pm our guests started to arrive, among them Trea Surace from Fiskars, Dr Bill Sykes MP, Councillor Pat Claridge, members of the Benalla Farmer’s Market Committee and parents. Well done to Jesse who bravely shared the contents of his Treasure Box with a room full of adult guests as well as his peers. I think it was lovely for our visitors to see a little bit of what goes on in the kindergarten program.

Everyone then moved outside to the garden. Our teacher Lisa started proceedings by thanking Fiskars and everyone else who was involved in getting the garden established. Trea from Fiskars then officially opened our garden and presented us with our commemorative stone. Pipa, Kyle and Oliver helped to cut the ribbon with her giant pair of scissors.

Once all our guests had admired the garden the children served their special afternoon tea. This culminated in the cutting of the celebration cake.

The committee of Benalla and District Preschool Partnership is very pleased with our new garden and hope that it is enjoyed by kindergarten children for many years to come. A huge thank you to Fiskars for inspiring the idea and making it possible and to all the children, teachers and parents who worked so hard to create it.

Also a special thank you to my mum, Judy, and son, Oliver who worked hard to produce the fantastic cake.

During the last couple of weeks of October our kindergarten children, teachers and even some parent volunteers were busy in our garden. With lots of rain having fallen in our district the weeds have been growing like mad and our tools have been put to great use to remove these green pests. One of our families kindly donated some mulch and we have also been busy putting that in to prepare for the warmer summer months that are on their way.

The rain, although great for our plants, has meant several delays to the finishing of the paving and pebbles but it was finally completed in a working bee the weekend before our opening ceremony. Apparently the children really like using the pavers as stepping stones through the garden.

Several families came to school last Saturday to erect our new garden shed. It has been cemented into the ground so it will be with us for a long time. We’ll be able to store all of our Fiskars tools safely.

The Akuna Garden was officially opened on the 14th October 2010. We had a wonderful assembly attended by many official guests including Mrs Mikki Blum, Fiskars Representative, Mrs Kerrie Ikin, the School Education Director for Western Sydney Region and Mr Ray Williams MP, Member for Hawkesbury.

We had lots of singing, dancing and musical items. Some of our special gardeners cut the ribbon with the giant scissors. Billy and Kiarnie cut the beautiful garden cake. Kiarnie was the student who named the garden.

Two very talented students wrote a poem about the garden:

The Glory Of Akuna’s Garden

We see colours of pink, yellow, white and blue,

Yes, we are talking about this garden so new.

It’s not just flowers, birds and bees,

There are wind chimes hanging off all the trees.

Worms will think “OH MY! OH MY!”

“That garden looks so nice to try!”

Crows do not dare come over here,

We have a scarcrow to scare all crows from far and near.

If I had to read out all the different flowers,

We will be here for hours and hours!

Walk down the steps, they lead you the way,

So come see our Akuna Garden, not tomorrow…. but today!

This is Akuna’s special day,

So let’s all shout out HOORAY!!  HOORAY!!

 

It was HARVEST DAY in the garden for the Kindergarten children in KS. They had fun pulling out the carrots and digging up the potatoes. The children all took home some carrots and potatoes for their family.

Keep watching our blog. We will be uploading a video of the Akuna Garden soon!

We were very fortunate to have a number of staff from Bunnings, Windsor Gardens and Modbury come to our school to erect 6 new raised grden beds and help our students plant seedlings and fruit trees. The children were thrilled to be able to help and with excess seedlings, they were each able to pot up a plant to take home.

The garden looks great and is growing!

We have our opening planned for November 12th.

 

The Akuna Garden is finished and looks spectacular.  The flowers are out in bloom and the summer vegetables are growing quickly. We haven’t had to use any recycled water to water the garden because we have had plenty of rain. Kindergarten children designed and constructed a fantastic scarecrow with their teacher. The scarecrow is wearing the school jacket and is standing proudly in the garden. The Akuna Garden will be officially opened on October 14th. The Opening Ceremony will be entertaining with the choir, dance troupe, recorder group and various classes performing musical items. Photos of the Akuna Garden opening will be in the next blog.

On August 28th, we hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony after another long day of revitalizing the trash-filled Gowanus Canal area. Everyone had a blast putting in a lot of new trees and shrubs, plus creating some cobblestone channels for street runoff.

We can’t thank Fiskars enough for the tools to enable so much work to be done this summer. As in the previous months, on the ribbon-cutting day, we did extensive weeding (of primarily mugwort and ailanthus), and composted everything in bins we made from discarded pallets.

We had already installed the birdhouses in some of these photos last year — but had never had a chance to plant in this particular area. Overall the summer was a tremendous success with record volunteer turnout for the organization!