I had the day off work on Friday, and happily it coincided with the official opening of the Kiama Primary School Garden.
Remember I was awarded a Permaculture Design Certificate scholarship by my local council? One of the other recipients was Maria, a teacher from Kiama Primary School, and she’s been heavily involved in getting this garden up and running. I’m helping to get a similar garden (although perhaps not quite on the same scale!) going at Jamberoo Primary School as the community project aspect of my PDC scholarship, so it was a great opportunity to gather ideas.
Here’s Maria (in the checked shirt) speaking at the opening ceremony:
During the ceremony, all the school kids were lined up along the swales to watch:
Costa Georgiadis (from Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS TV) was the celebrity guest and keynote speaker. What a great guy! He was funny, informative, and has an incredible way of relating to kids with irreverent humour and infectious enthusiasm. Here’s Costa with our mayor, Sandra McCarthy, and Vanessa John (Environmental Strategy Officer at Wollongong Council, and coordinator of the PDC scholarship programme) presenting students with some fruit trees for the garden:
I’ll write a follow-up post in the next couple of days to give you a tour of the garden.
Update: Here’s the promised follow-up: Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour.
Fantastic! Great to see this garden blooming – Aaron + Dan (and Maria) have done such a great job on this one… Thanks for posting 🙂
@Kirsten: It’s a great garden, and a fantastic resource for the school. Hope you enjoy the follow-up article as well.
Hi Darren. I just came across your website. Well done!! (On the sustainability journey and on finding the time to blog about it so well!) I look forward to seeing more pics of the Kiama garden and (in time) your Jamberoo project. My kids’ school (in Canberra) is involved in a new community garden project – it’s still at the ‘ideas gathering’ stage, so I’d gladly pinch some ideas from you!! Cheers, Amanda.
@Amanda: Wow! It’s been a long time! Hope you also enjoy the follow-up tour, and get some ideas from it for your school garden.
Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour
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