The following article was release the the latest edition of the ECO BUZZ environment magazine.
Nelson
Central School wins Treemendous
garden makeover!
Nelson Central School has just heard that
they have won a Treemendous garden
makeover worth $10,000, which they will use to create a native sensory garden
early next year! Treemendous School Makeovers, a joint initiative
between the Mazda Foundation and Project Crimson, teaches children about the
importance of caring for the environment through the development of outdoor
classrooms http://treemendous.org.nz/.
What helped them win the makeover was the
huge efforts made this year by the school’s envirogroup and teacher Lynley
Walters. They have been working hard to
create natural habitats within the school with the desire to bring more
wildlife to the grounds.
The Enviro agents have also been involved
in many other projects throughout the year and being a newly formed
Enviroschool they decided they needed to reduce the waste at the school so the
envirogroup conducted a whole-school waste audit, with the help of the
facilitators from Enviroschools and Nelson Environment Centre’s Waste Education
Services (WES), both programmes funded by the council.
After the waste audit, the students got
really busy making an action plan. They decided to convert the lunchtime food
scraps they generate daily into rich compost, but first they needed to design
and build large compost bins and of course a veggie garden! They called in the
WES facilitator to show them how to build healthy compost, and got going.
A lovely parent Joe Hay built three large wooden compost bins from
materials donated by Placemakers Nelson, and with funding from the council, the
school bought food scrap bins, sack barrows, garden tools, and a 4 layer worm
farm that they will get up and running early next year.
The students are currently planning the movies they are going to be
making to educate the rest of the school about the new composting and the paper
recycling systems. Hopefully these movies will be complete by week 8 and they
will get a couple of weeks composting underway before the end of the year.
