Growing Systems

Systems that are built around the school garden allow a holistic, integrated culture of sustainability to grow and offer a practical model for investigating ways to recycle food, fuels and energy, harvest water, increase biodiversity, and reduce waste.

Growing Communities have many ideas for managing the environmental impact of school systems. We are able to work with students and Staff to develop and enhance the following:

1. The way the school is organised and operates: The school garden can be closely linked to the tuckshop or a school kitchen to support education around food, history, and culture through processes of harvesting and cooking, and the establishment of social enterprises associated with processing, marketing, and selling garden produce. Schools can utilise gardens to develop stronger connections with parents and community groups through formal garden clubs and landcare groups, or organised support for teaching and learning, fund-raising, and infrastructure. Parental assistance in the garden enhances student participation and the potential for educating the wider community about sustainability, health, nutrition, and urban agriculture.

Schools might use their gardens to strengthen links with family and community by:

• Receiving and recycling green waste

• Restoring and increasing biodiversity

• Regenerating soil structures

• Growing and saving heritage seed stocks

2. The design of the school’s natural and built environments: Integrating natural and built environments and establishing a variety of spaces for learning and growing with attention to ecological systems, contributes to active and healthy lifestyles. School gardens encourage teachers and students outside of the classroom. They are inviting spaces that support a variety of habitats and enable observation, interaction, and reflection in different weather conditions. There are a variety of sites which can be established within the school grounds to further inspire learning such as ponds, forests, orchards, vegetable gardens, wild grass circles, rock gardens, and sculpture gardens.

Growing Communities works extensively with school communities to re-design school grounds and develop opportunities to maximise outdoor learning and participation. Our award-winning partnership with Nashville State School provides an example of a Queensland school reclaiming a neglected area of their site to establish a natural and dynamic learning environment. Through action-based learning cycles, students and teachers engage in re-designing their schools by exploring, devising, implementing and evaluating solutions to meet their needs sustainably.

3. Management of resources: Worm farms, composting systems, seed-propagation, ponds and swales, rainwater tanks… These are some of the ways in which ‘matter’ can be recycled in the garden, improving soil quality, increasing yield, reducing demand for resources outside of the school system, and operating in a balanced and conservative way. Growing Schools model sustainable behaviours in young people and teach explicitly for a reduction in waste, conservation of resources, and increased efficiency. Recycling food scraps through worm farms and composting systems for example, provides the opportunity for schools to initiate and further develop their levels of sustainability through behaviour change and increasing material resources, such as improved soil fertility.

4. Orientation of the curriculum: Education for sustainability is an exciting initiative. Not only are we addressing behaviours and values for the future, but also increasing our knowledge and understanding of natural systems that are dynamic, balanced, connected and interdependent. ‘Systems thinking’ is a way of representing and communicating ideas about ecological systems in nature. It is an effective and holistic pedagogical approach that examines parts in relation to the whole. Investigating ecological systems design develops and enhances students’ problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills through the emphasis on the interconnectivity of our relationship with the living systems of nature – small events can lead to large changes.