Permaculture program breaks ground at Sapphire Coast Anglican College

Inspired by a visit from Costa Georgiadis of ABC's Gardening Australia in May, agriculture teacher Heidi Marksel and Dan Bakker of Eat Dirt Permaculture have formed a student "Green Team" to help the college apply permaculture principles, and implement a whole school waste processing initiative.

The Green Team has been diligently working for the past six months to create a 20-metre poly-hooped garden plot, a 60sqm bush food forest, 300sqm of market garden beds, and a propagation nursery.

An outdoor garden classroom and sustainability hub will incorporate a whole school waste-to-resource platform, processing all organics onsite.

"The project will provide an integrated projects-based K-12 permaculture program while offering targeted regenerative activities and future-ready content for secondary agriculture students," college principal David Proudlove said.

"The project is also very keen to support external community projects with seedlings and student-grown produce."

Mr Bakker and Ms Marksel said students would get hands-on during 2024 to construct an outdoor kitchen/classroom from salvaged materials as well as participate in a detailed audit of its waste.

"The venture will also assist the onsite 'greenscaping' of the college mountain bike track with a range of native plants to be propagated from seed in its almost complete nursery," Ms Marksel added.

"In collaboration with our design and technology department we are also rather excited to integrate state of the art technology into our program."

Called a FarmBot, the device will be coded and remotely managed by students via wi-fi. The automated robot will plant, monitor, water and weed up to six metres of garden bed in a controlled greenhouse while also boosting the garden's seasonal propagation systems.

Recently the ag plot enjoyed a boost in activity with parent and self-titled 'Tree Guardian' of Planting Systems Australia, Nick Huggins, donating 14 feature trees and guards for the college's Year 2 class to plant with the big-buddy support of the Green Team to initiate its food forest.

Unique varieties were chosen and positioned to double as an edible wind break.

"Having planted the trees the students all cooperated to draw the nylon netting over its newly built poly-hooped garden in a barn-raising styled happy haul," said Mr Bakker, who shared that the day marked a special milestone with the landscape finally becoming "three dimensional".

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Primary and agriculture students will shortly mass-propagate over 35 seasonal vegetable and syntropic support species, which will be planted onsite prior to school holidays.

Provided by Bega Valley Seed Savers, the locally grown seed will be later harvested for use by the college's food technology students and donated to community groups, while some varieties will be grown out for seed-saving with Costa when he returns next year.

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