News from the 'Garden Buds'

The 'Garden Buds' from St John's Primary, Riverstone, plus some of their classmates, enjoyed their second 'Kitchen Garden Bus Tour' on Monday 14 November and visited four Kitchen Garden schools in the Parramatta Diocese, to meet students who share their love of learning by doing!
At St Patrick's Primary Blacktown, students investigated the 'no-dig' garden process, at St Andrew's Primary Marayong, notes were taken on how to grow delicious strawberries and at St Francis of Assisi Primary Glendenning the value of watering plants was experienced first hand!
The animals were a talking point at St Michael's Primary Blacktown South, where the Nagle College agricultural students gave tips on animal care and diet! Nano Cottage provided respite from the heat as the temperature rose to nearly 40 degrees but this didn't deter the students from stirring the compost!

St John's Primary Riverstone
The garden buds: establishment of vegetable and bushtucker gardens

The 'Garden Buds' program is designed to establish a vegetable garden and a bush tucker trail amongst an already extensive native planting on school grounds to complement our semi-rural environment. This project will help to develop and extend the oral language skills of our students as they interact and communicate with others and develop their public speaking skills when presenting information about the garden buds program. This program is supported within the framework of our Catholic ethos as students come to learn and appreciate God's creation. It will allow us to further our recycling practices with the inclusion of worm farms and composting of food waste as well as demonstrate garden to kitchen links with a menu featuring fresh 'home-grown' produce in our parent-run 'Snack Shack' initiative and provide a source of income to feed back to the program with excess produce being sold to school families and friends.