Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Concord School Garden


Concord School is a special school in Melbourne's north that's seeking to feed the entire school with the produce from their school garden. The design brief was six beds, two sleepers high - a bed for each group of students. It was a fairly cramped space to work in, but the beds have been staggered to maximise space while creating interesting flows around the space. I made the most of vertical growing opportunities by placing garden beds up against fences. I was pretty impressed by the transformation. There's ample room for wheelchairs, wheelbarrows and two people to walk side by side around all areas of the garden.


We built it over the Easter holidays, so the kids came back to school to find a brand new set of garden beds to work with. The year 10 and 11 horticulture teams are working in the garden and managing food production and composting. As we worked, grounds maintenance were making mulch out of trees that had been felled on the school grounds to be put down on the pathways. That's the kind of cycling of materials you hope that schools can implement for projects like this one.



Concord School decided to do away with their tumblers and compost bins and do all their composting in a bay system. We set this one up which looks pretty damn fine! That's me. I'm feeling good to be body tired and covered in a layer of fine dirt after a hard days work.