January 2025
Our Garden Redevelopments
Last year we celebrated an amazing milestone coming into our 10th year of operation. While this is an immense achievement it highlights some realities; most 24 Carrot Gardens in southern primary schools share the same age (roughly 10 years old). We want to ensure that our legacy schools continue to be in full bloom now and into the future.
With this in mind we made the decision to upgrade the design and infrastructure of these older gardens, designing and tailoring to each school’s needs with our 10 years of learnings in mind. These learnings include looking at the kitchen garden as a living classroom. Through this lens we have brought in a few practicalities that enable the Garden Specialists, who are crucial in delivering the 24 Carrot program, to spend their time educating students rather than maintaining a garden that is always on the cusp of a weed takeover.
Students at Brighton Primary School working in their new garden
One of the core practicalities was to look at how to get these gardens producing food as efficiently as possible. Using market garden techniques, such as those adopted by Grace and Dylan at Broom and Brine, we have designed the gardens to grow enough food to feed a village, or in our case a school.
With this productivity at the centre we designed the market gardens to be suitable for a school setting. Our designs take into account things like sight lines, which enable the teachers and Garden Specialists to see students more easily. We also considered accessible pathways and specifically designed accessible garden beds to allow inclusion for all. The final consideration that encapsulates the whole design is how the garden looks. We have found that if a garden is well attended and is pleasing on the eye, generally it is more inviting and respected!
We also believe it’s important for students to be exposed to current and up to date practices of food growing that can give them an insight into what ‘food security’ looks like in the current climate.
In 2024 we re-developed Glenorchy, Brighton and Springfield Gardens primary schools so far with Windermere Primary school up next!
If you would like to support our school garden upgrades you can do so by donating a one off or monthly donation on our website. Every $ counts and we are grateful for any support we receive to continue our work, providing flourishing kitchens & gardens in the Tasmanian schools that need them most.