Over the past two years we have been very fortunate to have the support of Hamilton Organic in our Backyard Garden projects.  They have supplied us with large amounts of compost that we used in all our gardens and we believe this compost contributed to us being the winning school in the Hamilton City Council's pumpkin competition.  Hamilton Organic also provided us with pea straw which we used over the summer holidays to minimise weed growth and further enrich our soil.  From this preparation, we are able to offer our students rich experiences in 'garden to table' cooking and essential life skills.  We thank Hamilton Organic for their support and our other dedicated supporters.  We encourage our community to participate in Hamilton Organic's loyalty programme.

The students below are making vegetarian couscous using a range of ingredients from their school garden.

to participate in Hamilton Organics loyalty programme.

On Friday 20 May our school was once again very lucky to receive and award from Mr Graham Kitto from Fairfield Rotary Club at our school assembly. This is our fifth year of receiving this special award and we are very grateful for the support.  Our award this year was for developing our pizza/outdoor oven so that we can grow food in our gardens and cook in our outdoor oven.  We were also lucky to receive a cheque for $200 that will go towards the next stage of our outdoor kitchen planning.  The students in the Backyard Garden Group were thrilled with our award.  We believe it is important to work together in our local communities and we encourage our community to support Fairfield Rotary Club's annual book fair too.

The Year 5/6 lunchtime Backyard Garden Group have been very busy over the past few weeks, preparing new gardens for winter planting, storing wood for the outdoor oven, tidying older gardens, dismantling an older garden and sowing grass seed over the bare soil left from and older garden.  They all show great commitment, enthusiasm and teamwork.