Tuturumuri – Best School Garden

Tuturumuri School Principal Lisa Malone writes: “We were thrilled with our recent win in the 2014 South Wairarapa Garden Shield Challenge for Best School Garden.  For a small school to achieve such a giant result was incredibly rewarding.  

The students worked hard, from planning the garden on paper, to seeing it through to fruition.  Students are out in the garden once a week, in small groups, with an incredibly keen gardener, Anne Dodds, who believes in natural (organic) gardening.  
Students are not only learning how to plan, plant and care for a garden, but also about learning to care for our environment and about sustainable living.  We use the produce in school lunches and we also sell back to our community (we currently have delicious garlic for sale!).  

Our students are currently building a worm farm, under the direction of Sissy Pickering, our Principal Release teacher, and the senior students are taking it a step further by planning an enterprise unit around this.  They will be advertising and selling our “Worm Wine” around the Wairarapa (and beyond!) with proceeds going back into the school.
 Currently, the seniors are building Scooter and BMX ramps (with a community volunteer) with funds from their last venture (sausage sizzles).  We are so fortunate in that we have an amazing community behind us!  Our school is their school!