We view this three-day festival as an opportunity to celebrate everything that is important to us in the Junior School and as such we have designed our own special garden. Paulette Double has been the designer and the coordinator/project manager.

The aim of our participation in this festival is to use our garden as a learning experience to:

Excite our tamariki about our environment, fresh produce and gardening.
Connect our school to the community.
Continue to look at different aspects of sustainability within an authentic context.
Deliver a strong environmental message.
Include Mahinga Kai.
Tell a story that is unique to our school.
Develop a strong connection with the environment to develop our growth as kaitiaki or guardians of our environment.

The design of the garden is a true representation of our Junior School. It will have aspects of sustainability, our relationships with our community, a celebration of all our cultures within our Junior School as well as the special bond we have with our older students. Our Pre School is also involved in our design by providing the water pump from their playground!

In doing this, all year groups have an important role to play. Year 1 and 2 will be focusing on worm farms. They will also be planting herbs and learning about the benefits for healthy lives.

Year 3 will be designing a potting table as well as scarecrows that show our “Big Sister, Little Sister” relationship that is special to our school.

Year 4 will be focusing on celebrating the multi-cultural element of our school by learning the different names of plants in other cultures' languages and designing labels to represent them.

Year 5 & 6 will be creating their bug houses that they researched and designed at the end of last year and put all their learning into practice. These will help create a sustainable environment.

All year groups have a selection of plants to nurture over the next few weeks at school. It is their responsibility to care for these until the festival. As well as this, all girls will be potting their very own plant next week to bring home to love and care for with the view that it will be returned to be placed in our exhibition garden.

There will be over two hundred plants in our garden. All plants have been grown from seed or young seedlings by us!

Over the Summer holidays, Paulette Double has been visiting garden shops and organising sponsors for our garden. We would like to acknowledge Bunnings, Zealandia, Terra Viva, Southern Woods Tree Nursery, and Spotlight for all their support in providing a huge variety of materials and plants to make our design and learning take place. Also a huge and heartfelt thank you to the families that have also been helping over the summer break. We are looking for parent help to help transport and set up our display in the Botanical Gardens on Thursday 11 March. We would also like to source aged timber (a rustic look) for a small picket fence (4 metres long and 50cm high), as well as 10 small log timber rounds to act as stepping stones (approximately 25cm diameter). If you have any offers or contributions that you think would benefit our design, please make contact with Paulette Double, our Year 3 teacher. We would be most grateful to you. paulette.double@stmargarets.school.nz

During the weekend, we will be needing Junior School girls to be at our exhibition for a time to be the ambassadors of our garden. This will involve approximately an hour of their time to be at the garden and be “tour guides’” to explain our gardens philosophy. We will need approximately 35 girls to volunteer to be able to help out on Saturday and Sunday of the exhibition. Please let me know if your daughter is unable to volunteer for the weekend by emailing me.

A Friendly Reminder