School Gardening Partnership 2024

“We are a Silver Enviro School and are aiming to achieve Gold in the future. Gardening is a big part of our enviro journey.

ALL students have the opportunity to get their hands in the soil through weeding, planting, nurturing and harvesting vegetables which often go into our ‘Koha Shed’ for families to use. We also strive to involve the students in the journey of garden-to-table by sending home harvested vegetables for students to share with their whanau.

We would love to continue our journey with Springvale Garden Centre through the School Garden Partnership. We think this is a fantastic initiative. Thank you so much!”

Brunswick School requested a starter pack containing the following;
– Tui Vegetable Mix
– iCan Blood & Bone and Organic Vegetable Fertiliser
– Yates Insect Spray
– Zealandia Vegetable Seedlings
– McGregor’s Microgreens Starter Kit

School Vege Challenge 2023

Harvest Time & Judging

Wow! The entire school came to greet me (Brydie, Springvale team member) and show me the garden. It’s fantastic and really encouraging to see these children so heavily involved. Plants are grown and tended to with great love and excitement.

The broccoli just wouldn’t wait for judging day so they had to harvest early and sent in plenty of photos of their successful harvest. The vegetables went to their Koha Stall for the community to use. They went very quickly, great to see such community support as well as how proud the students were of their produce.

Mid Challenge Update

The students at Brunswick have been doing a great job growing good, strong, healthy vegetables. Plenty of nice signage for clear identification in the gardens, and the children reported lots of success in growing from seed!
There’s been great community input and support, with opportunities for the students to be able to take their produce home and cook with it.

Getting Going

Brydie and Gareth (from Springvale) and Gene and Elyana (from Whanganui Chronicle) have been out delivering the starter kits to the schools.

School Vege Challenge 2022

Harvest Time & Judging

Mid Challenge Update

Everything about this school epitomises a down to earth country school. Arriving into the carpark at Brunswick school we are greeted by the sight of an honesty box produce stand.

Its morning break time when we arrive, the kids are playing in the fields, while the teachers are re-charging on coffee.

Beth the teacher in charge of the gardening program at Brunswick says she’ll round up the kids for a photo. I talk to the principal, Jane Corcoran. She told me some more about the produce stand and how successful it has been. As an enviro school they have developed an orchard as well as the vegetable gardens so have produce in abundance.

Kids start to gather from all over the fields where they had been playing. A couple of kids took a bit longer as they got down out of the trees they had been climbing – definitely a fair dinkum country school.

Beth rounds up the whole school for a photo with the garden as every single student is involved in the garden and growing things. The juniors have learnt to bury worms back in the soil, the students also know about predators, they have dealt with rats, stoats, and possums in their rural environment.

The kids are excited about gardening at Brunswick, they grow a decent amount of produce. As well as the stand in the carpark they also take some home and will be doing cooking at school too.

I checked out their greenhouse, they have got the seeds we gave them growing which will be ideal for planting out soon.

Tremendous work out at Brunswick. I’m looking forward to seeing the garden again in a couple of months.

Getting Going

Brunswick School is excited to participate in the School Vege Challenge as a motivator to get our students into the vege garden, hands in the dirt, growing veges and developing their understanding of GARDEN to TABLE.