Teaching Permaculture Gardening at the Hoekwil Primary School in the Garden Route
Establishing a veggie garden for a school is one thing but how do you get the children really involved and make them love their creations?
About a year ago, raised vegetable beds, compost and seedlings were kindly donated by local business man Jack Rubin, owner of Lancewood Dairy. These beds were allocated to the different grades, but a proper way of involving the children into the planting, watering and harvesting was yet to be found. A few parents donated a lot of their time into maintaining the garden, which was not a sustainable solution.
Finally a concept was born, which is yet to be proven successful, but has had a great enthusiastic start with the Grade 3 pupils on 18.of May 2010. Jack Rubin (below on the left) had to admit that he was more than impressed 
)
Three enthusiastic gardener moms thought of a way to give every child their own patch in order to feel a bonding with their own plants and their own patch of soil.
For 24 children in the class, the long and narrow bed was divided into 6 sections, with a different herb planted in the middle of each section. Then each of these sections got divided up into 4 patches, which each belonged to one child. Pebbles with the names of each child were placed into the patches, and the 4 children, who shared one section would be named the “Parsley Group”, the “Oreganum Group” and so on. We as well planted Aloe Bulbinella, Rosmary, Thyme and Wild Garlic.
Ona and her little son Kien preparing the beds.
A “planting container” was prepared for each child (egg boxes) with 4 different seedlings (lettuce, rocket, beet root, spinach and a few onions) and seeds of carrot, marigold, peas and raddish. 
The children were called out of class in groups of 4, learning the name of their herb section, learning the boundaries of their patches and the different plants they were planting. the borders were planted with rows of Marigold or Carrot and the dividers of the sections were planted with rows of peas. The raddish seeds every child could scatter inside their specific patch. It was obvious that they were excited and felt pride in “owning” their patch with their own named stone and their own plants. They thoroughly enjoyed it and are looking forward to their weekly gardening sessions.
In the meantime, a watering raster has been drawn up to ensure regular watering of the patches with a watering can.
The Aloe Bulbinella Group
The Origanum Group
The Rosmary Group
The Thyme Group
The Parsley Group
The Wild Garlic Group
The Organiser Team – Esme, Christine and Ona +Kien
You can reach us via christine@natural-living.co.za
We want to expand this concept to serve other schools in need of vegetable gardening and are looking for sponsors.
