Spring in full swing

Spring is here as we are enjoying some beautiful days, frosty starts and spring flowers.  The gardens are getting planted out with seedlings and seeds.  Duntroon School is still buzzing from it's great Bee Aware day and this week Garden Club Kids made Buzzy Bee's with the help from one of the Duntroon School Garden Co-ordinators, Janet Brown.
                     The bee bodies are made by twisting the pipe cleaners around your finger.

The students buzzed off to the flowers to test their bee pollinating powers on the school fruit trees

Bees like daffodills too

Equipt with wings the bees could sting too!!

 Aren't they cute bee's.  Nice work Janet Brown and students

Teams also got weeding

                              GREAT to see more parent help come to have fun in the garden :)

Teams got planting.  Here is Mischa and Sophia

Of special mention is the feijoa shrub that Duntoon School have proudly bought with their proceeds they made from their soup day last week.  

Here they get planting with Duntroon other School Garden Co-ordinator Mischa Clouston

                              And it got watered.  What a neat way to spend their soup money

Duntroon School have a shed and Mischa has designed these neat hooks and trays for the students to have good access to the tools and it looks so cool and tidy.

  Great ideas for others schools

Waitaki Valley School Garden Club students had Ella McKelvey parent help bring along some raspberry cuttings that the students planted out

                                                              Katie dug a good hole

Katy did a goo job watering

Students got to pot up some currant cuttings to take home.  Katy Tyrrell suggested the berries are delicious on pancakes! Thanks for the tip.

This week students weeded the garlic patch and dug in some of the green manure plants we planted

 The late harvest garlic should be read to harvest and plait up when the students return from their summer holidays.  It is looking good.

Students dug over a new garden bed and planted sunflower seeds

 Students also potted up some paper pockets with a few sunflower or collard seeds to take home

Fenwick school have been busy in their lovely garden, weeding the garlic.

 Digging in the left over cauliflower leaves

 They have some exciting news, that their hanging garden is now up and ready for planting!!
Made wtih the help of Hoete, a grandparent help, it looks AMAZING.  Complete with carpet lined growing shelves the children enjoyed planting strawberry plants. YUM

 And also in great news, a new parent help in the Fenwick School Garden! Welcome Alice

                                        Sorting out the strawberry plants and weeding

 It is always fun for the students to be able to take home plants, seeds, seedlings.  Last week they got to take home whole silverbeet plants

Something nice we have started at Fenwick School is 'Mindfulness in the Garden' at the start of every gardening club we have a sit down around the herb tyres and go through a mindfulness exercise.  The children have responded well.  It is nice to have a calm start to all the gardening activity and for students to draw their attention to the peace and sounds in the garden.

At St Joseph's School there has been some awesome parent help.  Louise McDougall continues to inspire the students with her creative ideas.  Nice work Louise. 

 Whilst removing the parsley that was bolting the team found a few tasty carrots that EVERYONE was keen to try.

Another great thing for the School Garden's is when grandparents visit and impart their wisdom.  Here Grandfather Morris visits and plants potatoes with the students.

We had some left over bird feeder mix that we placed into the trees for the birds to find

                                          Lots of weeding was done, pulling out the last of the kale

 Some mizuna seedlings were raised that the Waitaki Community Gardens glasshouse.  Students got to plant out the seedlings.

Having fun in the process and getting hands a bit dirty. 

And last but not least Pembroke School have been having fun in their lovely garden.  More and more student's seem to come each week.  So a call out to more parent and grandparent help!

Here our only parent help Jade gets planting with the keen gardeners

 Students LOVE taking trays and pockets home to get their home gardens going.  It's great to see

Student's getting paper pockets to fill with flower or sunflower seeds 

                                                   Putting seeds their paper pockets

                                    Grace is a keen gardener and is watering the strawberry patch!

                       Eating, and harvesting and weeding the broccoli patch that has gone to seed

 It is great when pre-schoolers come along to Garden Club with their parents.  They get to hang out with the big kids and in this case plant some sunflower seeds along the way :)

 Time for School holidays.  Try and visit your local school garden or offer to help out on Garden Club day next term. Get planting.  Sunflower seeds take 100 days to mature so now is a good time :)

Duntroon School's Bee Aware day was a real Buzz

Duntroon School put on a beeutiful day on 15.9.15 as part of the Bee Aware September, a National Beekeepers Association of New Zealand initiative.  Duntroon School is well aware of the importance of Bee's and wanted to show their full support and educate the students in a fun way.

Delicious honey and bee themed treats were made by their school garden club team.  Janet, Mischa and Leanne.  Leanne made Annabel Langbeins lemon. honey and cream puds with an edible borage flower.  They were so delicious I had two!

                                           Mischa made this amazing Bee hive cake

                                                 I made bee bickkies~~and some flowers

                                        Janet made these great bee's as well as earrings :)

 A local beekeeper Richard Aarts gave the students a talk about the importance of bees.  He brought bee keeping gear that the children could handle to see where the bees live and make honey.

                         Some student's got the opportunity to dress in a bee suit.

Student's learnt bee facts. Here are some.

''We need bees, more than you might think. Bees pollinate one third of the food we eat, and life would be a struggle without them. It’s a two-way street, though – bees need us to plant food they can eat, to keep them buzzing and doing the awesome stuff they do for us.

Over $5 billion of New Zealand’s agricultural exports also depend on bees. Bee numbers worldwide are in decline and we must do all that we can to save them before it’s too late – some of the main factors causing this are nutritional stress, lack of food compromising the bees’ resistance to pests and diseases, and pesticides and sprays.'' N.B.NZ website

Also Richard Aarts told the students that spring and autumn are high pollen times, which the bees collect on their legs, and the height of summer is more a high nectar time that they use for making honey.  Bee's favourite flowers are white clover, vipers bluglos and scottish thistle.

Students had a bee themed mufti day and a soup lunch made from the school's edible garden.  Funds raised go towards the school edible garden.  All the soup SOLD OUT. There was a veggie and a potato and leek soup. 

The bee cake, bickkies and bee treats were enjoyed by all. the long line for bee cake!

                                                                  Bee and flower bickkies
                                                             Most student's got a face paint too

                                                   Flower face paint and bickkie

The great team at Duntroon School, teachers and staff in colourful support of their School edible garden bee day  The garden co-ordinators past and present. Miscah, Leanne, Megan and Janet

Way to go Duntroon sschool  Best of luck for the National Beekeepers Association New Zealand photo competition being run this bee aware september month.

                                        Congrats for a great event Duntroon School. Very inspiring.

                              Check out the link to learn more about Bee aware month.                                      http://www.nba.org.nz/beeawaremonth/