A GARDEN project has been keeping years 5 and 6 students at St Joseph’s Sorrento busy.
Last year they were finalists in the Tidy Town Awards for their indigenous medicinal, edible sensory garden, which led to them receiving a $1450 Land Care grant to complete a garden this year. The garden also helped the students work towards the Resource Smart Schools biodiversity module.
Teacher Jane Byrne said students had joined parishioners at St Mary’s to learn about plants named in the Bible, as well as their symbolism and medicinal use.
“This tied in with stewardship and the responsibility of catholic schools in ecological education,” she said.
“It is that we have a responsibility to look after the land, and also give students an understanding and a perspective of how the indigenous people looked after their lands in a sustainable way and how this linked in with their spirituality said. “It’s two-way science.”
Bunnings Rosebud donated trees and shrubs for the project.
The school’s sustainability leaders have also been busy working with environmentalist Josie Jones on her Last Straw project in which she asks shopkeepers at Sorrento to exchange their plastic straws for paper straws. This has led to a partnership with SeaRoad Ferries, Ms Byrne said.
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 31 March 2020
