Alfresco Salad Session

We had a really fun afternoon in the Garden today whipping up some salads with our Garden Warriors. They needed replenishing after a morning of swimming sports!

We hope you enjoy our video.

 

Has anyone else noticed yet that we have only skipped a couple of Garden Sessions these last 2 terms due to rain...it always rains on the Coast...yeah right!

Tui Primary School Category Winners

 Westport North School Garden Warriors take out the Tui School Challenge,

Primary School Category!

 

Today we had an extra special garden session, not only did the local Kindy kids come down for an explore of our Award wining garden, but we were hosting Bryan from Tui,

and Mitre 10's Francie.

 Budding Master Chef's were evident as a quick parsley pesto was whipped up for Garden Warrior tasting platters for our guests....

 A couple of our special Katikati Avocados were mashed into guacamole submission by our Warriors...

 ...celery sticks were harvested for dipping duty, and I see carrots were also proudly lined up on display and latter devoured!

The word "Garnish" was on every Warrior's lips as they wholeheartedly embraced the concept of "Decorating your food" with edible colour!

 Our celebratory guests Bryan and Francie really enjoyed seeing and tasting, the continued growth of our garden and delivering our generous prizes. WE can't wait to implement Stage two of our garden plans now that we have more available resources, thanks to the generosity of Tui and Mitre 10. The impact the garden has had in our community has been huge.

 Our Garden Facilitator had a few awards of her own to give out to our Garden Warriors for "Cultivating Excellence" in our garden!

 Trent has been a HUGE force in our Garden and was the very PROUD recipient of his very own book recording his HUGE contribution to the Garden & School.

 One of our most committed Garden Warriors who has regularly been first through the gate every lunchtime, Samantha Rose also got her very own photo book of her Garden Journey.

 Well done to ALL our Garden Warriors who have "Cultivated Excellence" in our Garden, Mrs Marsh, the entire Teaching staff and your "Garden Facilitators" are very proud of what you have collectively achieved these last 2 terms. We hope you enjoy the copies of these special books that will be in your library.

 To thank Tui for providing such a wonderful opportunity in the form of "The School Garden Challenge" ...we thought a "Tui tree" would be the perfect enhancement to our Garden!

 We all really enjoyed digging a hole and planting this Kowhai (thank you Paper 4 trees & Holcim) at the entrance to our Garden to welcome Tui's and Warriors.

Our Principal got the coveted task of placing the final soil around it.

Well done Garden Warriors, a garden for now and the future!

Monster Market Madness

 Finally it was the week of the School Monster Market & Gala!

 

The sun gave us a timely reminder that it was now the season for hats and sunscreen (please Garden Warriors don't forget your hats & drink bottles on Wednesday afternoons)

 

Garden Warriors settled into making items to sell at their Garden Warrior stall.

 Bright & colourful "bubble wands" were very popular, a huge thanks to Mr Allwiredup for organising the copper wire and the Ladies at our Salvation Army for the buttons and old necklaces that supplimented the $2 shop beads.

 Copper wire handles got installed on our jar lanterns

 Funny faces were added to our "lettuce head pets"

 ...and MUCH concentration was required for constructing the driftwood Christmas trees!

 ...all that concentration and sizing paid off Garden Warriors as these trees look stunning!

 All this beautiful sunshine meant we needed to have an ice cream to finish off our afternoon of hard work!

 Finally our Garden Warriors got to devour their ice cream they had made!
Exactly what we all needed after a hot afternoon in the garden, we will definitely make ice cream again, maybe mint & pea, strawberry & rhubarb ripple?

 Our Garden Warrior Stall was a HUGE success at the Gala. A BIG thank you to the Westport News for raising our profile these last few weeks, it was very noticeable how many keen gardeners had read about us and come down especially to have a look at our Garden. Our Garden Visitor's book was FULL of wonderful comments & encouragement!

 Bottle Garden Lettuce could barely keep up with demand, with stocks constantly replenished!

Rhubarb, lettuce seedlings, silver beet bundles, sweet peas, herbs, ginger beer, and bubble wands proved extremely popular. WE now know we need more fresh $1 produce, also more mixed salad greens, and to start our coriander and basil off earlier in a green house. A plan also needs to be hatched for another 2 boxes of HUGE avocados fresh from Katikati in the North Island...these sold out fast!

 Garden Warrior Bubble wands were carefully chosen and put to use straight away...

We may have to start a blog for 101 uses for cable drums. This cable drum with bubble mixture inserts kept everyone coming back to the Garden Warrior stall!

THANK YOU everyone for supporting our stall, and a HUGE special thanks to Rhys' mum for all her help on the day, it was busy!

A sneak preview...

 ...of what our Garden Warriors will have on offer at the Market next weekend!

Unfortunately there was no Garden Club this week due to a short day this Wednesday...

However...a couple of our most industrious Garden Warriors were hard at work testing out some ideas for next weeks Garden Club!

 

Yes, next week our Garden Warriors will be making these bright & breezy bubble wands and woody Christmas tree decorations. We hope to also have a "make your own bubble wand" station too with a HUGE tub of bubble mixture in the Garden...bubble mayhem...I can't wait!

 The wire handles for our lanterns have been cut in preparation for fitting next Wednesday...

 ...lettuce seedlings will be 4 sale

 ...the bottle garden lettuce will be waltzing out the gate in salad bags!

...and hopefully our basil & coriander will make an appearance in time to sell our "blinged" Herb tins!

 

Be sure to come along and support the garden stand at the Monster Market and spend some "bubble" time in our beautiful colourful garden made for kids by kids!

 

See you there!

Stop Press: Garden Warrior's host VIP guests!

Friday at Westport North School was a HUGE day!

Not only was it our School Triathlon...but our Garden Warrior's were very excited to share their gardening efforts with Bryan from Tui, and some other distinguished guests that included MR McManus our Mayor, Francie from Mitre 10's garden department, the lovely Westport News Reporter, and Dylan the Architectural Landscaper for our Local Council.

Bryan from Tui was a HUGE hit with our Garden Warrior's, some of whom were so delighted to receive our framed "Garden Finalist" certificate...they high tailed it straight to assembly to show it off! We are all VERY appreciative of the beautiful Tui Gardening books, and garden tools...thank you!

Bryan was full of enthusiasm for our efforts, and offered us some ideas to work toward such as converting one of the changing sheds into a propagating House, he also suggested a big orange store where our "Garden Facilitator" would find just the fitting she needs to get our seaweed tank under way...while she is sorting the tap fitting we'll haul out the other chlorine tank from the pump shed and see how we can reuse the pipe work to potentially collect rainwater off the changing room roof!

NEVER fear Garden Warrior's our Garden will NEVER be finished with our collective creativity!

(One of our Garden Warrior's was VERY worried that the garden may be finished & Garden Club would be over!)

Please have a look at our video presentation of our Garden...we are VERY proud of our efforts. This is what you can do with a bunch of enthusiastic Garden Warriors in two school terms, with a couple of hand drills, cable ties, flax, packets of seeds, and a few Awapuni Nursery seedling bundles...

Gearing up for the Monster Market in 2 weeks...

 Today in our Garden the Garden Warriors absorbed themselves decorating jars.

Next week we'll add a tea light candle and a wire handle to ...become lanterns to sell at our Monster Market.

 

 This activity proved so popular our "Garden Facilitator" had to make an emergency trip to the Sallies for another 2 banana boxes of jars!

 Garden Warriors learnt nifty tricks like putting the jar on their arm so they could paint right round.

 

Could the School Uniform Fairy please slip a preloved top from the 2nd hand uniform shop into this Warriors bag... as he literally "absorbed" himself in his work today!

We would have liked to have put him in a bucket to soak but someone may have asked questions?

 Garden Warriors absorbed themselves in their work until every last bit of paint had been used!

 Nice mixture of Christmas, garden, and geometric designs Warriors, I think these lanterns are going to be all the rage for Alfresco Garden Dining this summer on the Coast!

Great work Garden Warriors!

Our garden desperately needs another hose and some sprinkler attachments now that summer is here. We also need to purchase a yard broom and flat shovel for the sand pit area...and a tap to get our seaweed tank operational...50 lanterns at $1-$2 each may just do the trick!

Homemade hokey pokey ice cream!

 Now that we are spending a whole afternoon in the School Garden on Wednesdays, we have really been working up a sweat...homemade hokey pokey ice cream is required to cool us down!

 It really was quite simple stuff...just take 3 bowls and separate out 5 eggs

 First whip the egg whites until really stiff, then whip the egg yolks with 1 cup of sugar, then whip 500ml of cream with vanilla...

 Smash up your homemade hokey pokey, we all loved having a turn of this...and clearing up all the left over crumbs!

Gently fold EVERYTHING together... and disguise your homemade ice cream as a supermarket brand in the freezer...where hopefully our teachers won't notice it!

Oh how we can't wait until next garden session to eat this!

 

NB: absolutely nothing from our garden was used in our ice cream, we just had to trial the recipe in this hot weather in anticipation of having raspberries and strawberries later in the summer to go with it!

A Blustery Week

 A blustery southwesterly didn't deter this Monarch Butterfly from paying a visit to our swan plant...lets hope it can grow a bit more before the eggs hatch into VERY Hungary little caterpillars... dressed in the yellow and black stripes of the junior Westport rugby team

 This term we are fortunate to have a whole Wednesday afternoon in the Garden as part of our school wide "move it and groove it" elective. This extremely helpful Warrior settled into drilling holes in bottle tops for ...

 ...these Garden Warriors to finish off their Christmas Bean tree. It really looks amazing, with a yellow star on top, tremendous effort Warriors!

 Ever keen & helpful, this Garden Warrior took charge of fixing Room 1's driftwood art to the fence...almost all the way along now!

 A hard working team of Garden Warriors set to planting out all the edible Viola's that they grew, around the edge of our bottle garden. This should looking stunning in a few weeks time with rings of violet edible violas and flaming marigolds, framing our lettuce. Another row of lettuce seedlings also went behind  these nearly ready to eat lettuce! Yum, salad season is here!

 This team of Garden Warriors put in a great effort planting up lettuce seedlings ready for the Monster Market in mid-November. The bottle garden lettuce will be ready for harvesting at market time...so be sure to look out for our salad bags!

 Our weaving wall provided a place for quite contemplation, and an opportunity to discover inner creativity!

 A tremendous trench was dug by these Garden Warriors, and a start made on constructing a bottle edge to our feijoa and rosemary hedging. This fledgling hedge will welcome the added protection.

 Our flax cable drum knitting was cast off and installed over some driftwood to create a sculptural installation, for our gourd seedlings to grow up.

Lets try threading some shells on as we knit next time...

 Wheel barrow loads of mulch was delivered to our black currants and raspberries...this will help keep the weeds down and the moisture in. WE may try some flax weaving through this fence to try and break up the stiff Northerly wind that blows in from the sea...

Sadly we farwelled one of our Garden Warriors this week.

Two of our "Garden Facilitators" put together these flowers on behalf of our school. North School was represented by Burgundy Elysium, the rugby team was there as black iris and lots of yellow lilly's and snap dragons, the West Coast was present in the form of flowering tea tree, ferns and fronds, a few sneaky little favourite lollies and treats were also in there!

 

Now we just need our sweet peas to start flowering so we can give our teachers a well deserved bouquet too, they were true North Stars this week providing guidance to all!