New Chapter for Moonah Primary’s Garden

Moonah Primary School holds a special place in our history, having nurtured Tasmania’s very first Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden before becoming the site where we seeded our flagship 24 Carrot Gardens program more than 12 years ago. As you might imagine, school gardens are living classrooms that endure the weather and wear of the seasons and years. Recently, our garden redevelopment team, led by Tamas Oszvald, breathed new life into the well-loved space with a complete re-design that honours the garden’s history. Shaped by the ideas of staff and students, the newly developed garden is now back in the hands of the school, ready for its next chapter under the stewardship of Garden Specialist Lucy Bleach…

Over the years the garden has evolved and most recently has undertaken an amazing redevelopment, creating new market garden beds, flower gardens, a grassy knoll to play on, an outdoor cooking area and a beautiful yarning circle amongst native plants. All this builds on beautiful old fruit trees planted when the garden was first created. Everyone is so excited to have a new garden that grows from extraordinary provenance, and we hope to seed wonder, sustenance, ritual, attention and joy into our future!

Right now, our market garden is growing a range of inter-seasonal veggies, including cauliflower, broccoli, rainbow chard, spring onions, celery and various herbs, which are close to harvesting. Our grain and seed crop has taken off, with wheat, broad beans and sunflowers growing well. All the flowers and shrubs planted on our school planting day are becoming established, the fruit trees are setting fruit, and we are starting to see some lovely blooms and early berries as the Spring approaches Summer.

The compost is up and running again, and we are excited to have set up our worm farm in the custom-built worm bath, where we re-settled 1000 tiger worms! Towards the end of Term 3 we made some colourful vegetable prints using potato stamps onto fabric, which have been sewn together to create our welcome banner-curtains at the garden gate, to let students and staff know when the garden is open for visitors and interested gardeners.

When we garden together, we have dirt underneath our finger nails, we see wondrous things and we are tending food that will fill our bellies. We have roaming conversations where everyone has a voice and our words fall into the soil to grow with our veggies and flowers. Our stories are meshed with the food we grow.

As we commence Term 4, we will start our summer planting schedule, while we harvest the late Winter-early Spring crops. Summer definitely feels like it’s on the way, and everyone is always welcome to hang out in the garden to enjoy the sun and see what’s growing!

Words by Lucy Bleach, Moonah Primary School’s Garden Specialist.