The most useful thing in a kitchen garden, though seldom seen, is a sink with running water. Ainslie Organic Kids' (AOK) sustainable school gardens have taps and sinks for washing veggies and hands in water that is then recycled.
Teacher Melissa Rawlings had Year 6 students Shianne Allier, Madi Aken, Jade Coyles and Natalia Selivanov rinsing just harvested tomatoes, mint, Italian parsley and marigolds for the primary school canteen. On Friday afternoons the students set up a stall to sell excess produce to parents and teachers, with the money going back into purchasing seedlings, seeds and a new wheelbarrow wheel.
The girls were quick to name what they most like about AOK. For Shianne it is eating fresh strawberries and blueberries and for Madi it is cuddling and playing with the chickens. Jade is a fan of the green smoothie made from silver beet, spinach, coriander, mint, kale, berries and milk while Natalia's favourite is ricotta and spinach triangles.
Melissa (nee Biddle, just back from her honeymoon), is the teacher in the AOK team. In addition to helping develop teaching resources for the garden she runs Little Sprouts, the student sustainability club. Little Sprouts is for students from kindergarten to Year 6 and all have the opportunity to plant and harvest. In class time and in the lunchtime cooking club, they have cooked four ingredient recipes using fresh produce from the garden.
Food included veggie damper and pastries, muffins, stir fry and salads. They enjoyed eating and talking about the dishes they cooked, particularly adventurous tastes like kale chips and even the teachers extended their palettes with heirloom beetroot in canteen salads.
The school P&C used some of their ACT Health Promotion grant to employ an AOK sustainability project officer, Eliza Hopkins. Her role in the team is to help make the garden an accessible resource for teachers, students, parents and community members. Eliza works with teachers to develop and run classes in the garden, helps organise regular community events like last week's Harvest Evening and Autumn gardening talk, and runs a weekly student gardening club with Rebecca Fragnito.
Eliza says they notice the joy of students seeing something planted as a seed turn into something they can eat. This included tiny tom tomatoes and ruby potatoes that won prizes at the recent Royal Canberra Show.
In addition to the support and advice provided by ACT Health's Fresh Taste (featured in last week's Kitchen Garden column), the AOK team is part of the Actsmart Schools program. That program provides ongoing guidance about the maintenance of the veggie garden, the process for including the school community in the project and how to link gardening with the curriculum.
Last year parents and staff attended Actsmart Schools' gardening and biodiversity workshop to hear about what other schools are doing and get advice about establishing a school vegetable patch and chicken coop. Reflecting on her role, Eliza says, "One of the outcomes of the AOK program that I most treasure is that students leave with an understanding of how they can enjoy fresh food in their everyday lives - they realise that it is easy to grow and cook veggies and, importantly, that it is yum!"
Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.
