The Grove News

Welcome to The Grove News!  

Let me introduce myself. My name is Ellen and I’m the new Garden Specialist at the school. I am a very passionate food gardener that has worked for the past 30 years as an educator for sustainability, having recently returned to Melbourne from nine months travelling around Australia. 

In Term One, the Year Three and Four students have been focusing on caring for Country, learning about indigenous, native and exotic plants, and how to care for the garden and each other. At the moment, we are learning about the composition of soil and have made many seed balls to encourage bees and butterflies to visit our garden this autumn. 

The students have been harvesting lots of fresh produce from the garden this term: apples, basil, beans (10kg harvested last week alone), capsicum, corn, cucumbers (oh, so many cucumbers!), flowers, parsley, potatoes, raspberries, squash and zucchini (all thanks to Sue and the students who planted out our summer crops last year!). The spaghetti squash and pumpkins will be ready to harvest by the end of this term. 

Also, I’d like to thank all the wonderful parent helpers who have attended our classes on Friday morning and the first working bee: Andrea Stanning, Brooke Michie, Cherise Asirvadem, Elise Cowley, Inez Gomez, Jessica De Smaele, Joanna Catto, Liane Wong, Lily Kovacevic, Naomi Clifford, Sam Cannon, Sharon Molenaar and Stephanie Tusa (apologies if I have forgotten someone!). 

Please feel free to drop by The Grove on a Friday to say hello or to help out in the garden, as there are always plenty of jobs that need doing. If you would like to volunteer to support students’ outdoor learning on a Friday morning you can sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c094bafa629a7fac43-grove#/ or drop me an email. 

Photo: A visitor to ‘The Grove’ on Friday, Dasypodia cymatodes, the northern old lady moth or northern wattle moth.