MULBERRY GROVE SCHOOL

AOTEA GREAT BARRIER ISLAND





School Gardens



The Mulberry Grove School raised and fenced gardens were completed in 2020 after the school re-opened from lockdown and as a way to gather our community together in a positive way. The school operates a garden to table program where produce from the gardens is used for school lunches. Surplus is made into preserves, shared with families or donated to our community pantry to share with our wider community. The school children are involved in all areas of the garden: from testing soil quality, seed collecting and seed raising, through to weekly alternating gardening groups, weeding, planting, mulching, harvesting, cooking and preserving. The school also operates a community composting system (no meat or fish), where community members are welcome to drop food scraps off to our composts. Our school is part of the Enviro-schools programme and is working towards our Green Gold accreditation.

Our most recent addition to the garden has been our new trellis pergolas and fence, sponsored by Bunnings, who covered the cost of building materials, gardening tools and wheelbarrows. The next stage for our gardens is going to be re-using our old water tanks to create a self irrigation system.