St Joseph's Catholic School Sustainable Garden Project 2006

Prepared by the Year Six Enviro Agents 2006 from St Joseph's Catholic School, Hamilton.

The Year Six Enviro Agents have decided they would write the final evaluation of the project as they knew it better than anyone else…..

We started the construction of the sustainable garden with the $2300 that the Hamilton City Council Envirofund gave us in July 2006. The money came in extremely handy for purchasing all the things we needed for developing our garden into what it is today. (Conor Shand)

With our Property Managers' help (Mr Lake) we dug up the asphalt. Our one goal was to turn this wasteland into a sustainable garden. Once we had finished digging we went to the saw mill and didn't return until we had the trailer full of sleepers. When we got back we started to put the sleepers around where the gardens were going to be. (James Adamson)

After we collected the sleepers from the saw mill, Mr Lake directed us as we nailed them into place, to make a garden for all our plants and vegetables. ( Daniel Bradford)

As we nail, drill and hammer our muscles are pumping. We kept on building for many hours until the job was done. We banged and banged to get the 15 cm nails into the sleepers. It was a lot of hard work. (Jonah Harvey-Robinson)

We did lots of lifting, carrying and putting things together. Cheryl Noble came in and helped us think about the plants we should plant and what we shouldn't plant. (Morgan Irwin)

After we had finished building the planting boxes, we started to put the soil in them for all the herbs and plants we were going to plant. After we had finished putting the soil in the planting boxes we started to put the bark around the sustainable garden.(Laura McKeown)

We had to work as a team to cover all of the paths with bark. It took us one whole afternoon to cover all the paths with bark.  The garden looked really good, but we still had a lot more work to do to finish our sustainable garden. (Hayley Evelyn-Rolls)

We were all glad that we had finished placing the sleepers, soil and bark. We then went back to our plans and started to place and plant our plants and herbs. (Hannah Goodbehere)

We were all very happy with how our hard work had turned out. We now will continue to keep the sustainable garden going and educate the school, parish and community about sustainability. We are all going to eat the vegetables we have grown and we will take some of them home for our families to use.  (Alannah Gregan)

We still have a few things to finish around the sustainable garden, but we have decided to leave them for next years Enviro Agents so they can learn about sustainability like we did this year. (Samantha Griffin)

Thank you to the Hamilton City Council Envirofund for providing the funding, Cheryl Noble from the Permaculture Trust for helping with the planning and Mr  Watene Lake our Property Manager for his help, guidance and patience over the project.