How To Start A School Garden: 5 Things To Remember
Wondering how to start a school garden? Having a watering plan is a must!
If you have been thinking about how to start a school garden, but don’t know where to start - let me help! Starting a school garden can be simple, but there are a few important things to take into consideration that you don’t have to think about with a home garden. First and foremost, it’s important to think about how it will get watered on the weekends and over holidays. Rather conveniently, though many gardening project can be concluded within one school term.
Here are 5 logistical issues to think about (with solutions) when considering how to start a school garden, including not only watering tips, but how to make use of a garden across the whole year so you and your students get great return on investment, and of course, great fun by being out in nature learning how to grow delicious veggies and flowers that bring in pollinators!
And if you are looking for information about what to plant each season, you might like my 2024 Planting Calendar below!
Kids of all ages can master gardening including my adorable neighbours Sam and Nat who are total green thumbs (above)!
How To Start A School Garden | 5 Tips
#1 Watering Roster: all veggies and flowers need to watered daily so a class watering roster will be needed with a school garden, unless the school has an automatic watering system. During autumn and winter, most plants can get away with not being watered on the weekend (if they are watered late Friday afternoon and first thing Monday morning). In Brisbane, not watering for 2 days in spring and summer is risky and you don’t want to turn up to dead plants at school.
#2 Term-time projects: conveniently, it takes about 10-12 weeks to go from planting a seed to getting the final sunflowers, lettuce or basil in your school garden. I recommend starting a gardening project in the very first week of term to ensure the class gets to see the great final result before holidays! Check out the Salisbury Grange Youtube for how to plant seeds easily.
#3 Best terms 2 + 3: In Brisbane at least, by far the best school terms to start a school garden are Term 2 + Term 3 because the weather is a lot milder and hence, less stressful for plants. There are plenty of things that can be grown in Term 1 + Term 4, but they will need to be watered both morning and night or planted somewhere that is shaded for half of the day to stop getting burnt to a crisp!
#4 Plan to use it across who year: it can take an investment of money and effort to start a school garden, so a good way to get a healthy return on investment is to plan to use the garden across the whole year. For example, you can plant a bee garden in Term 1, a mini wheat field in Term 2, and sunflowers in Term 3, and practice returning nutrients to the soil in Term 4, among many other options.
#5 Choose easy plants: some veggies and flowers are much easier to grow than others. For example, cabbage is beautiful but can take almost 9 months to grow. By contrast, lettuce, basil and rocket are very simple to grow, as are sunflowers. I recommend making life as easy as possible!
The basis of keeping a school garden alive: watering!
Looking fore more information? Check out my take on Classroom Gardening Projects To Do, When You Don’t Have A School Garden or 10 Home School Gardening Ideas To Try In Brisbane.
