ST Mary’s Primary School were thrilled to welcome visitors last Friday to check out their new garden redevelopments led by the school’s sustainability group. 

In recent years, the school has been working to install features to help promote a sustainable lifestyle as well as play a part in stepping towards a more sustainable future.

There were a range of representatives on the day who were integral to the school’s sustainable gardening projects, with the main redevelopment on display being the newly-installed ‘Food Cubes’ in place of the garden beds. 

Lynette Donaldson, one of the key members who drove the project, said that improving the school’s veggie garden had been a lengthy process, but that it was all worth the wait.

“After COVID, we realised that the garden wasn’t going to be sustainable in its current format,” she said.

“We had two really wet years and garden flooding - it was around that time that we found out about the Biofilta Food Cubes, and it was just a natural progression to go down that path.

“We just needed to refocus and look at how we could improve but get something that was really sustainable.”

There have been 13 Food Cubes donated to the St Mary’s Garden with soil donated by Biogro.

Each Australian-made cube is made from recycled plastic and can grow up to 25 kg of produce, meaning school will have the capacity to grow 325kg of produce each year for the students to distribute.

Food Cube director, Brendan Condon came down from Melbourne to attend the day, and said he was happy to collaborate with St Mary’s to donate some cubes to the school alongside other contributors.

“We think that every school, every community across Australia should be thinking about growing food in our communities,” he said.

“We have huge amounts of food waste and green waste that can be composted and turned back into farming, and we have lots of rainwater coming off rooftops.

“Every city and community has lots of space to grow a lot of food, what we have been missing is a good water efficient food growing system.”

Warrnambool gardener, Perry Cho, who had also donated Food Cubes to the school, said that he had been using the cubes at home and wanted to contribute to the community gardening initiative. 

“When Lynn told me she was helping this school to start a vegetables garden, I said I was happy to contribute,” he said.

“I bought a few cubes, so did Brendan, and it’s for a good cause.

“Some of the plants you can harvest in just 25 days.

“That’s how I got involved, I bought six and that went to 10, then I managed to convince my wife to get 25 cubes at home.”

Mr Condon said that Biofilta took the invention of an Australian wicking bed and improved on it in terms of efficiency and structure, that allows for the Food Cubes to ‘clip’ together into instant farms in any space.

“It’s very water efficient during hot spells and droughts, but equally when it floods it won’t become waterlogged, and they can keep growing through big periods of rain,” he said.

One of the challenges St Mary’s wanted to tackle in their garden redevelopment was maintaining the garden over long holiday breaks, which the developed technology of the Food Cube has assisted with.

“They use less than half the water of ingrown garden beds, you only have to water them once a week in the summer, once every few weeks during winter,” Mr Condon said.

“It’s great that the kids can come back from holidays and see an improvement in their garden,” Mrs Donaldson added. 

Mrs Donaldson also said that there had already been a positive response from students involved in the gardening and healthy eating program.

“The kids planted seeds and they were up in six days- they were so excited,” she said.

“There has been lots of help from the kids in the process- they all rocked up and were unloading the car, digging holes, putting plants in, it was just great.”

Mr Cho said that he had only started gardening just over two years ago, after having previously owned an accountant firm in Hamilton before his retirement.

“I dedicated my retirement to helping kids because it’s such a good thing,” he said.

“If they start young, when they get older, they will appreciate what growing your own food is about.”

The sustainability group had been led by Grade 6 students at St Mary’s, who Mrs Donaldson said had been very enthusiastic in learning about growing food and gardening.

“These are the leaders, but they are bringing along all the other kids with them, which is just great,” she said. 

“For us, it was the way to go.”