Term 1 2026 in the Arataki School Gardens

Welcome back to the Arataki School garden blog! Term 1 has been an incredibly busy, muddy, and exciting time for our tamariki. We had great fun getting our hands dirty, learning about nature, and helping our school garden grow. Here is the story of our outdoor classroom adventures this term.

Hard Work and Heavy Lifting

We started the term by getting our soil ready for action. The garden beds needed a lot of love to get them back in top shape. Everyone jumped in to pull weeds and clear out the old summer growth. We also restarted our busy worm bins to get our wriggly helpers back to work making food for the soil.

Then, the heavy work began! - a huge load of rich compost arrived from Te Puke Landscaping Supplies. (Thanks LJ!) We used this fresh soil to top up our beds. It’s amazing how much soil 10 gardeners can shift in 30 minutes!  With 7 groups throughout the day,  it just took 2 days to get the gardens topped up.  A special thank you goes out to Brian, who kindly repaired our broken garden bed just in time for us to fill it up to the brim ready for planting.

Planting and Sowing

Once the soil was ready, it was time to fill the garden with new life. The students worked carefully to sow seeds straight into the ground and plant delicate young seedlings. We even planted carrot seeds into deep tubs to give them plenty of room to grow big and straight.

To keep the garden healthy, the students stayed on top of daily watering duties during the warm days. We also sowed green manure crops into two of our empty beds. These special plants will grow over the cooler months to rest the soil and give it a boost of nutrition for next season.

Creativity and Sweet Harvests

Gardening is about much more than just digging. This term, it was also about safety, art, and enjoying the fruits of our hard work. We noticed that monarch butterflies were visiting our Swan Plants, so we cordoned off the area. This helped us protect the insects while we learned how to stay safe around these toxic plants.

The garden also got a lovely splash of colour when the students painted bright, beautiful signs to label our different crops. Of course, the absolute highlight of the term was the big dig. The children had so much fun digging into the soil to harvest our big, sweet kumara!

An Early End and Special Guests

Term 1 ended a bit abruptly and early this year, due to some funding issues, which we are still navigating our way through. Despite the sudden finish, we were incredibly proud of what we managed to get done in the short term.

During the holidays at the end of term, we had an exciting visit from the local news team at SunLive! They came down to see our thriving garden in action and chat with our students and their families about how much they love our PIPS programme. It was a wonderful way to celebrate a fantastic term of growth. We are hopeful that with the support of our communities and our member schools, we will be able to continue with this valuable gardening programme next term.