Term 3 has been a busy one at MMI, and the gardens have not been the exception. We kicked off the chilly weather with nature’s timely lemon harvest, and made lemonade to ward off the winter bugs. We’ve had a few visitors to the garden too as next year’s students popped by on their tour around the school. We have continued with our regular seed sowing to keep up a supply of seedlings for the shade house, and it seems that broad beans have been the winner hands down this term! They are looking so healthy and growing so vigorously that they have inspired the building of some tall support structures in our garden beds.

Thanks to Miss Barr’s initiative and Brendan’s enthusiasm and speedy construction skills, we have a new garden bed next to the shed. We ﬁlled it using the layering process, with branches, clippings, co􀀁ee grinds and six barrow loads of black gold from our own compost bay! The students have decided that they would like to delegate the space to a herb garden, so that they can bring bunches of herbs home regularly and we can get creative with pesto.

The highlight of the term for us was a trip to Mauao with Miss Barr and Whaea Clare, where we met Josh, the park ranger. Josh shared his passion for the area and directed us as to how best to plant the trees, treading softly and surrounding each one with a cardboard shield, to keep hungry bunnies away. We returned over 100 native seedlings to the PiPs ngahere from where gardeners had collected seeds two years ago.

It was a full morning of good mahi and in years to come, the gardeners will be able to point out the forest they have planted (to their whānau and tamariki) , on their walks up Mauao. What a legacy to leave!