Our plaque arrives

There was much excitement in our classroom yesterday when a very, very , heavy parcel arrived in the mail. It was our amazing wicked, watery, wiggly worm garden wock plaque. It goes beautifully in front of our garden. we have been eating peas, strawberries, blueberries and other students have been using our herbs in their cooking class. Since our opening the garden has grown heaps and we have planted lots of new seedlings. Now it is getting hotter we are busy watering and weeding, we hope to get a rainwater tank soon.

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Bee Winfield talks to us

Yesterday Bee Winfield from Merri Bee Organic Farm came in to give the students a very informative talk about organic farming, worms and compost. The children were engrossed for the whole hour she was here and learnt lots. They asked many questions, some of which Bee is going home to research. Thank you so much for coming in Bee, it is great to have local knowledge shared around. We hope she will come and visit again soon.

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Hello dear viewer my name is Peter I am in year 5, I am a student at Nannup district high school. I am writing this because of an agreement with the orange thumb project sponsored by Fiskars. The point of the orange thumb project is to encourage schools and community groups to grow gardens. And if they win they supply all the start up equipment as well as $1000 worth of Bunning Warehouse gift vouchers.

My class is making a sustainable garden called the wicked watery wiggly worm garden. First we planted some fruit trees then we dug up the front, filled it with soil and planted some onions, chillies, parsnips and leeks. After that we made our own sections, there were berries, herbs ,potatoes, lavender, rosemary, seedlings and passion fruit. I am in berries, we are growing strawberries and blue berries. Personally I think that we only got some where when we got our own parts because it took us a term to make the front all done but a week to dig up our own parts.

After we won we got a letter from the Minister and Director General of Education congratulating us on our win. The good thing about a class project is that we learnt to work together.

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The herb garden

Hello my name is Zane, I’m 10 years old and I go to Nannup District High School and I’m in a class of 5, 6, and 7.

I’m in year five and our class is doing a garden called wicked watery wiggly worm garden. Nannup is in the lower south west of Western Australia. It’s a nice small town, it has lots of trees and not many shops. It is nice and quiet because there are not many cars driving around but there is a mill that makes lots of noises like a siren for their break and when to start working again.

We got letters from the Minister for Education her name is Dr Elizabeth Constable MLA and the Director General is called Sharyn O’Neill. My section of the garden is the potatoes and it was fun.

By Zane

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Dear reader,

My name is Katherine, I am in year 7 and I attend Nannup District in Nannup, Western Australia.

   Nannup is a small country community, in the south west of Australia, about 3 ¾ hours from Perth. We have lots of bush and native animals surrounding us. We have a nice river called the Blackwood River. Once a year we also have a garden festival!!

   We are digging up an old playground, and creating a delicious wonder from it! We have planted strawberries, beans, leeks, passionfruit, olives, rosemary, lavender, onions, and much more.

   But let me start at the beginning of our amazing garden.

   The first step to making our mouth-watering marvel was to dig out all the sand to make room for the soil our local shire donated. This was the most fustrating, sweaty and hardest working part. I didn’t particularly like going in the garden back then.

   Some time during the digging the sand out, we planted some seeds in some seed trays and soil. We grew and watered them for about a month, and then transferred them to plastic seedling pots. After approximately a fortnight in the plastic seedling pots, we relocated them to a special section in our garden that we had filled with soil.

   Near the end of an Australian Term 1 (February to ½ way through April) we made our worm farm. We made it by taking 2 foam boxes, and stacking them on top of each other (the bottom one with its lid off), and cork-screwing holes in the top one so the worms can breathe. The top box has the scraps and worms in it, and the bottom box collects the worm juice and fertiliser. We have a special bucket just outside our classroom that people put their scraps in for the worms (worms can’t eat citrus, dairy, meat or onions).

   During that time we also made a compost bin, with blood and bone fertiliser, shredded paper, kitchen scraps, dead leaves, sticks and green leaves, with a little bit of water to keep it moist. This was the easiest, but smelliest part.

   For about three weeks we mucked around, designing more compost bins, Digging out more of the garden, filling it in with more soil, but one Tuesday we filled most of the garden with herbs, potato’s, seedlings, et cetera, et cetera. We even put three little garden gnomes in!

   Now all we have to do in our garden is watering, and that only until we can find a garden tank for it.

   Yours sincerely,

   Katherine

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Hi I am Skye I am 10 and I am in year 5. I go to school in Nannup and I also live in Nannup, Nannup is a small town in the country Nannup is not a city Nannup is in the south west of Western Australia. Our school name is Nannup district high school.

We started making a garden at school then we entered the orange thumb project. We put in a face about how gardening and the garden makes us feel.

A few weeks after we entered the competition a person from the orange thumb project rang up Mrs C (who is our teacher) and the person from the orange thumb project said that we had won the competition with some other schools. When she got off the phone she told us that we had won the grant for our garden and we started screaming and saying “YAY”. Then we started receiving the equipment and the $1, 0000 from Bunnings. On the weekend after we received the 2 gift cards Mrs C went and bought some stuff for our garden.

On Monday after she had got the stuff from Bunnings we started digging out more sand out of our garden and we put in some soil and started planting the fruit trees and vegetables. In our garden we planted different things in different places. We have seedlings, potatoes, herbs, berries, fruit trees and rosemary and lavender.

The people that helped us with our garden are some parents, teachers, the school, the shire of Nannup (they donated some soil) and the orange thumb project. We have recently got letters from the director general and the minister of education. The grant really helped us with the garden and we are all happy about it.

Bryce, Zoe and me

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Hi my name is Iona, I am from Nannup. It is in W.A. I am in yr 6. Nannup is a quiet little town, 40 minutes away from Busselton.

In Nannup D.H.S our class has been making a garden. We have planted different plants in different patches. We had some groups; there was a potato group, herb group, seedlings and a berry group. I am in the berry group, we have planted blueberries and strawberries. It made me feel happy and hard working.

When we entered the orange thumb competition on the internet we won we won tools. These are some of the things we won: shovels, shirts, rakes, compost buckets, a $1000 voucher for Bunnings, pitch forks and planting tools, they helped us a lot with our garden.

We are also making two hedges on the sides of our garden, one with lavender & rosemary and the other with lemon, lime and passion fruit. Some people worked in those groups too.

After all the plants have grown we are going to sell them and use them for cooking in our school.

We have got 2 letters saying that we did a good job on our project. One from the Director General of the Department of Education & Training and one from the Minister for Education.

We also got some soil from the shire and we had to wheelbarrow it by hand every time we needed soil for our garden. But we had a few tragedies of tipping the soil in the wheelbarrow over, but we managed to get it to our garden most of the time. When we had raked all the soil we broke up some potting soil and  wet it then put that on top of our soil and then some special garden soil and mixed them all together by raking it.

Our class thinks our garden is remarkable and we will hopefully enter the competition again.

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Hi, my name is Neve and I’m in year 6 at Nannup District High School. I’m in a class with 5/6/7. Nannup is a small town in Western Australia and there is only 1 school and a few shops. It’s a nice small, quiet, calm town that’s got lots of bush and trees. It’s very peaceful in Nannup, it’s a beautiful town.

At school we have been making a sustainable garden, 2 compost bins and a worm farm. It’s only our class that is making the garden but other classes come and look at it lots. We named our garden the Wicked Wiggly Watery Worm Garden. Our garden is a peaceful, lovely garden.

First in our garden we had we had to dig lots of sand out and then we dug holes to plant some fruit trees. After we planted the fruit trees we watered them everyday so they would stay alive. When we had dug most of the white sand out we put soil in and planted seedlings.

We entered the Orange Thumb Project competition and were very lucky to be 1 of the winners. We won $1000 worth of tools and garden equipment and 2 $500 gift vouchers for Bunning’s Warehouse. We also got shirts and gloves. Thankyou Fiskars for the tools and gift vouchers. It was helpful and generous. We are working especially hard on our garden.

We were put into groups and in the groups we were given a section of the garden. In our section we had to dig, put soil in, plant and water. I am in the Berry group and we have planted strawberries and blueberries. There are 3 other people in the berry group. I love gardening and been out in the garden. Its fun and it’s good to be out in the fresh air. I feel happy, excited and bubbly when I’m out in the garden. The tools we got have helped us heaps and they are great for digging raking and lots of other things.

With the fruits and vegetables we hope to produce we want to sell them and cook delicious food with them. Also we would let some other classes taste them. I hope our fruit and vegies are tasty and fresh. There are lots of different types of seedlings that we have planted.

We have had lots of people come and help us in the garden. The shire brought us some soil to use for gardening. Lots of other parents and other teachers have helped us a lot with the garden. They were very kind to help us.

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Hello my name is Danika I am 11 years old. I go to Nannup District High School and I am in a year 5, 6, 7 class. I am year 6 and in our class we are doing a garden. We are very happy and proud of our selves. Thank you so much Friskars for giving us the tools and money. We would have got nowhere if we didn’t win the tools and money.

To start with our garden was just a sand pit but now it is a garden thanks to you.

We have worked very hard on our garden. We had a shire truck bring us soil then we had to wheel barrow it all the way to our garden.

Our school has got 2 letters for our class, from the Director General of Education and the Minister for Education we thought that was good because it means people know about a little town.

In our garden we have each have a section I am in the fruit section I work on the passion fruit so I have to water them and when we get fruit I get to pick it.

We have made a worm farm to fertilize our garden and we give them our fruit scraps from lunch and when we’re in class. We got our worms from Skye’s house because her mum has a worm farm too.

We have got 2 compost bins so we will use that on our garden.

When we have grown some food we will do some cooking and eat it yum.

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Hi my name is Callum I live in Nannup I am in grade five. I am in the year 5/6/7 and we have been making a garden from an old playground and it’s totally transformed. 

With 20 students we converted it in about 5 weeks we’ve also made a worm farm to give us a bit of worm casting for the garden. We all split up into five groups to make little gardens. I decided to do potatoes which involved a lot of digging.

 I thank you for the $1000 grant (and maybe a bit over) which has really sped us up because we had about 8 tools to work with  and now we lots of tools thanks to you . I was really excited when we got the two $500 Bunning’s  gift cards we bought a lot of plants and 1 wheel barrow. We have got a letter from the Director General of Education and the Minister of Education.

The class thinks it’s great because we have co-operated and the teacher wanted us to do that so that is great.

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