Stem

Last week, the STEM scholarship group and SC2 went on an excursion to the Ballarat Botanic Gardens. This excursion marked the start of Buninyong Primary School's involvement in the Raising Rarity program. 

Raising Rarity is an initiative run the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria which focuses on rare and endangered indigenous plant species from Victoria. The goal of the program is to plant out these rare species in primary schools where students are involved in collecting data, monitoring growth and importantly, harvesting seed to ensure the survival of the species. For more about this program, Gardening Australia took a closer look. The video can be found at https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/how-to/raising-rarity/105319970

During the excursion, our young botanists learned about the species they will be working on luechrysum albicans subspecies tricolour (Common name: paper daisy). This involved learning how to collect data, expanding their botany vocabulary and having a very close look at their target species. 

The next step for our students participating in raising rarity will be to construct some garden beds at the Scotsburn campus and then begin planting our luechrysum albicans subspecies tricolour.