Education Providers

Currumbin Community
Special School

Another Chance at Life

How many times has an enthusiastic teacher decided to establish an edible garden to help their students learn about healthy food?

The initial surge of energy to get the project going, the reward gained seeing those first seedlings blossom into luscious veggies and the sense of achievement as students excitedly eat the produce they helped to grow.

Such a success, until the hours each week watering and weeding start to add up and become a chore rather than a joy. Then the deflation when the plants die during the school holidays. Bit by bit the project starts to fall apart, and eventually other priorities take over and the garden slips into decline.

The issues facing Currumbin Community Special School staff and volunteers in trying to reestablish and maintain viable edible gardens are common issues faced by so many schools and Early Childhood Learning Centers. The enthusiasm may be there at the start, however the weight of daily watering and weeding eventually takes its toll on those involved, leading to burnout and the eventual demise of the gardens.

In August 2021, Aqualess joined forces with Stewart Brooker from Projects of Purpose and Wendy Short from OzHarvest to start a long-term project to redevelop and reinvigorate the school’s garden beds.  The beds were built over a decade ago, as part of the school’s participation in Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Program.  

The school is committed to ensuring its students become as independent as possible.  A key area of their focus is healthy eating and living.  In this area assisting students to embrace sustainability and improve the quality of their lived environment fits perfectly as a critical focus of their commitment to student self-determination.

The gardens were still being used as part of the hospitality/kitchen courses at the school, however the soil had become pretty hard and the various watering systems had seen better days. As a result, it was difficult to keep plants alive and the students interested in their edible garden. Teachers/ volunteers also had to take on quite a workload watering and weeding.

Additionally, much of the timber used to build the garden beds had rotted and the walls were falling apart.  Despite all this, when we looked at the total area devoted to garden beds there was certainly a huge amount of real estate to work with.  Thankfully, the indigenous garden to the side of the veggie gardens was in much better shape, with reasonably mature trees and bushes in good condition and a huge rainwater tank hidden away in a corner to service both areas.  

One could say the area had good bones.  It just needed some structural surgery, a huge face lift and considerable sweat and tears to bring it back to its full potential.

Over the years there had been a number of attempts to bring the gardens back into productivity, however despite starting off with vigor none had managed to last the distance.  The size of the gardens meant that the tasks of watering and weeding became overwhelming and soon fell to one or two over worked teachers.  

It became soul destroying to come in after holidays and find everything dead over summer if it wasn’t possible to water the plants every day or overrun with weeds following periods of rain.  Additionally, the students quickly lost heart and enthusiasm for each attempt to rejuvenate the gardens.  As importantly, the grounds support staff and school management eventually saw each new attempt as both costly and futile.  So, you can imagine the brick wall that greeted Patty and Wendy’s latest enthusiastic rush of blood to the head to once again rejuvenate the gardens!!!

Stage one was identified as retrofitting three garden beds.  One was a very large timber bed situated in the lawn area, which Pinewood Products had helped to rebuild with new timber sleepers.  The other two were tall, corrugated beds on concrete, close to the kitchen which were still being used but which were no longer very productive, unless you counted the weeds!

Rocky Point came to the party with the provision of compost to help breed life into the very sad soil that needed to be dug out for the retrofitting to begin.  Of course, an army of volunteers were on hand to do the heavy work.  At this point, there are two special people that need a mention – Patty Dwyer the Senior School Leader whose focus has been finding a way to bring the garden beds back to life.  Plus, Wendy Short who, as an Oz Harvest volunteer, and owner of consulting firm Sustainability First which specialises in helping schools rejuvenate or create kitchen gardens, has helped Patty bring this vision from a dream to the first stage of reality.  Both women have a level of dedication, energy and commitment that has certainly been the driving force in this project.  

What wasn’t realized initially was exactly how different the whole process would be this time.  No more daily watering plus some additional volunteer resources through OzHarvest, on hand regularly to help support the students and teachers in their new venture.   It might have appeared to others that Patty and Wendy were just jumping in feet first, however, they actually had done their research and brought together a great team to support the school and students’ long term in this venture.

This team incorporates Aqualess, the Queensland distributor for WaterUps®, Oz Harvest who, for the first time are partnering with the school to provide volunteers on an ongoing basis to assist with maintaining the garden beds in co-operation with the students, Projects of Purpose who brought everyone together and, of course, Patty and Wendy plus Wendy’s children and the very enthusiastic food services students from the school.

The core of this new strategy is the use of the modern scientific take on the ancient art of wicking; developed, owned and manufactured locally by an Australian company - WaterUps®.   This exciting new modular product made from recycled polypropylene is breathing life into rundown edible gardens.  It’s also facilitating the emergence of new edible jewels in schools and Early Childhood Learning Centers around the country.  

It was a slam dunk once Patty and Wendy were introduced to this system.  Like many other educators they discovered they can grow nutrient dense food while reducing the water used to maintain their gardens by up to 80% and they can draw the water from their rainwater tank overflow.  Plus, they could see the value in reducing the time taken to water their gardens by around 90%.  

Better still, they discovered this system is customizable and can be combined with easy-to-use organic composting systems at an affordable cost.  Additionally, when accessed through Aqualess it is supported by educator training, student lesson plans and learning resources - so this quickly became their solution of choice.

As infrastructure to support integrated sustainability programs across the curriculum the WaterUps® wicking garden system makes an economic and practical key focus for real, consistent water savings.  When teamed with composting to help reduce organic waste by recycling food scraps these two items form an affordable, easy to implement, sustainable model any educator can embrace.

Where is this project up to now?  The first three garden beds have been retrofitted with the WaterUps® wicking system by Aqualess and they are now flourishing, producing beautiful edible plants that the students enjoy helping to look after, harvest and include in their cooking.

The remaining garden beds are being redesigned, as currently they are too large for students to reach into the middle of them.  Better access will be provided via a concrete path to a flexible area of movable and wheelchair accessible garden beds.  These will be built by Aqualess to a design developed by one of their clients who is, themselves, wheelchair bound with the aim of further improving the inclusiveness of the gardening activities.

As a focus of the rejuvenated gardens a Yarning Circle (a harmonious, creative and collaborative space to build relationships that has been used by indigenous cultures for centuries) will also be built.  A Hills Hoist will form the center of the Yarning Circle, with passionfruit vines in WaterUps® square single cell planters growing up and over it to provide much needed shade and help create a place for meeting and relaxing.  The Yarning circle will also be the focus of the schools daily organic waste processing practices using two custom built Aqualess Billabong Wicking Worm Farms that will also double as bench seating for students and teachers.

So, stay tuned for more installments of how the Currumbin Community Special School, Aqualess and Oz Harvest continue to create a thriving sustainability program.  This will be low maintenance and meet the specific physical needs of many students who otherwise would find it difficult to gain experience growing their own healthy, nutrient dense food in such a waterwise environment.

To read more about retrofitting the WaterUps® wicking cell system to your existing garden beds click here.
To find out more about this program and how Aqualess can best meet your specific needs, please contact Rosemary at our office on 1300 844 493 on email her at info@aqualess.com.au.

Tumbleweed Lesson Plans and Resources

As part of this program, Tumbleweed have agreed to make available their lesson plans, which are not generally available with their products.  They are also making available access to their learning resources for educators to use along with their library of learning activities.

Their lesson plans include:

Small Green Steps Educator Training

The Small GREEN Steps program will give you all you need to embed sustainability across your service and help you encourage children to develop an appreciation of nature.  

The courses are delivered from the TEACHABLE online learning platform - providing access on a 24/7 basis and including email and telephone support for 12 months.

For additional reading about wicking beds for water-efficient gardens click here. To view a video by Angus Stewart on installing his WaterUps® wicking bed click here. You can also view his video on Growing Vegetables in his WaterUps® Wicking Bed here.

To find out more about how Aqualess can best assist you to meet your specific needs in relation to sustainability infrastructure and learning programs please contact Rosemary on 1300 844 493 or by email at info@aqualess.com.au

Pacific Pines Helping Hands
Early Learning Centre

On the 27th of September 2021, Aqualess donated and installed a WaterUps® Corro wicking garden bed for use by the staff and children at the Pacific Pines Helping Hands Early Learning Centre. The children enjoyed filling up the reservoir with water and helping to fill the bed with soil and mulch. Some of the children enjoyed picking up handfuls of worms from the garden bed soil.

The early learning centre plans to grow vegetables and salad greens as well as tomatoes for the children’s meals for before and after school care as well as during their school holiday programmes.