This term in the Arataki School gardens, our young gardeners rolled up their sleeves and got busy bringing life, colour, and food to our outdoor spaces. Every week, students got the chance to connect with the soil, explore the magic of growing food, and learn about the many little things that help a garden thrive. It wasn’t just about planting and harvesting, but feasting too!

This term, our gardeners on Tuesdays were from Mangatawa and Mauao and we worked, as usual, with keen gardeners from lots of different classes and year groups at lunchtime too! Our winter gardens are looking good already! We started out from the beginning, with seed sowing. Following an experiment in Mount Maunganui Intermediate gardens, we have found that sowing seeds in rolls of wool (rescued from frozen food packaging) produced stronger, healthier seedlings and in a much shorter time period.

In term 1, we have been working with the New Entrant gardeners as well as one of our senior classes.  We began with an introduction to the gardens - the worm farms are always a hit and our young gardeners were keen to feed them every week. They quickly learn that the worms and their castings are not a stinky, dirty part of the garden, but the clever composters who recycle our food waste and help us build healthy, organic soil!

We welcomed our Hikurangi classes to the gardens in Term 4 and they were super enthusiastic!  With the Garden and Art Festival in week 4 of the term, there was lots to be done so that we could share what we do with our visitors. 

Our Tuesdays this term were spent with the Montessori and Kopukairoa classes, and we have certainly got a lot done in the gardens. Our first task was to shift the Sentinel Garden from one end of the field to the other, so after digging and transporting countless barrow loads of soil and then carefully transporting plants, we called for help (thanks Brian!) to take the kiwifruit bin on a wobbly journey across the field to a new spot among the garden beds. It’s amazing how fast we can get things done, when we all work together!

Ruma 13 from Kopukairoa joined with Mangatawa this term to take care of the school gardens.

At the beginning of the term they had a fun treasure hunt, digging in the garden beds, and managed to fill a basket with kumara to share with the school community at the front of the school.