Pizza garden has got the lot

By Casey Neill
THE Patch Primary School’s garden could next month be named the best in the state.
It was recently awarded the title of best school garden in the Eastern Metropolitan Region.
Then on Friday 30 October a helicopter filled with judges touched down to assess it for the state title in the Best School Garden competition.
The school’s environmental educator Michelle Rayner said students and staff were extremely proud to show off the garden, which includes an outdoor pizza oven.
“They seemed impressed but were reserved as you would expect judges to be,” she said.
“But they thoroughly enjoyed our lunch of wood-fire pizza and freshly picked salad greens.”
Students impressed the judges with a marimba performance and were asked to take centre stage at the 2 December State Awards ceremony at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Ms Rayner said the whole school community had helped to establish and develop the garden over the past three years.
“Like all good gardens it is a work in progress, never finished and always something to do,” she said.
“It is a vibrant and living space, fully integrated into the school curriculum.”
Ms Rayner brought the garden vision to the school following a trip to the Hampton Court Palace Garden Show in England in 2002.
The school appointed Ms Rayner as environmental educator in 2005, formed a garden team and designated previously unused land for a garden and outdoor learning space.
Students tested and assessed the soil and climate, developed a vision for the garden, produced scale site drawings, shaped garden beds and paths and planted.
“The students have extraordinary knowledge of the garden and all its parts and take great ownership and responsibility for it,” Ms Rayner said.
The garden consists of several small gardens.
The dry garden demonstrates low water use, the Koori garden educates students on food and plant fibres used by the local Wurundjeri people and the Australian Garden highlights the beauty of native flora.
Students pick fruits and vegetables and cook pizza in their new outdoor oven using fresh herbs.
They relax in the grass maze, magical fairy garden, water garden and the alphabet garden, which features plants from agapanthus through to zebra grass.
The school this year completed a chook house, which is home to chickens and ducks raised in the school incubator and features a ‘green roof’ of succulents.
The Patch Primary School last month welcomed visitors to enjoy its evolving outdoor wonderland with a garden festival for the Dandenong Garden Festival – Inspiring in Spring.
It celebrated the work achieved in the school garden so far and will become an annual spring event.
Visitors got creative outdoors with scarecrow making, bush tepee weaving, pot plant painting, garden and wetlands tours and plant propagating.
They also enjoyed inspiring garden lectures and the first wood fired pizzas from the school’s new outdoor oven.