Gardening Group

A week of discovery

Did you know that lettuce is a daisy?

Let your lettuce go to seed and you’ll discover it has dandelion-like flowers and seeds attached to little parachutes.

This was just one botanical fact the new senior unit Environment Leaders learnt in the Woodend Children’s Community Garden this fortnight. Other than botany and learning about the weather, they also fixed the wheelbarrows and helped teach the ‘littlies’ in lunchtime garden club.

Garden club has got off to a great start this year with about 15 children spending their lunch times in the garden each week discovering how everything has grown over summer and what fruits, veggies and herbs are ready for tasting:

Yellow (butter) beans were voted yummier than green bush beans.
The ‘pop corn-like’ seeds we scraped from dried out, old corn cobs and planted in November have grown into ginormous plants.
The life cycle of carrots – their white flowers, insect pollinators, hairy seeds that look like tiny insects, we planted some carrot seeds and discovered carrots sown last year that we dug up and took home to eat.
We cut a green tomato in half to discover the seeds inside.
We discussed the weather and discovered that if we use our imagination, clouds can look like almost anything: “a mermaid”, “a dinosaur”, “a princess”, “an elephant” and that these can change and disappear very quickly.

WPS Gardening Group

Weekly Gardening Sessions:

Where: Woodend Community Children’s Garden (Buckland St)

When: 12.45-2.00pm Mondays - parent help required to run lunchtime Kid’s Garden Club

2.00-3.30pm Mondays - parent’s gardening group and Senior Unit Environmental Leaders

BYO: Bring your enthusiasm and desire to help (No gardening knowhow required). Working With Children Check required. Please wear sturdy shoes and weather appropriate clothing. Pre-school age children are welcome too

Contact: Nicole Middleton 0418 233 366 (volunteer parent)

Where: Carlsruhe Kitchen Garden (Nicholson St, Carlsruhe)

When: 1.45-3.30pm Thursdays - parent help required to run Thursday gardening activity

BYO: Please wear sturdy shoes and weather appropriate clothing. Working With Children Check required.

Contact: Ann Ireland (Carlsruhe Unit Coordinator)

If you can’t make it to any of these sessions, you can help out the gardens at anytime. Simply contact Ann or myself for an update on what needs to be done.

Gardening Group Facilitator

Nicole Middleton - 0418 233 366