Garden of dreams

Sunshine Coast Daily Sunday May 31 2009, by Janine Hill Children eat the fruits of their labour in school-based vegie patches

Leonie Shanahan eyed off the garden lying fallow at her children€™s school.

She saw weeds and soil needing work, but in her mind€™s eye, she could see children digging, planting, picking and eating their own fruit and vegetables. And she saw where her future lay.  

€œAt that moment, I decided what I was going to do with my horticultural qualifications,€ she said.

€œI saw what kids were eating at school. There€™s no point complaining about what tuckshops are serving.  If they don€™t serve it, it€™ll only come in the lunchboxes from home anyway.

€œYou€™ve got to set an example with good food: start growing it and encouraging kids to eat it.€ Leonie€™s edible school garden programs were born.

She set about revamping the disused garden at Sunshine Beach State School and, since 2001, has helped create edible gardens at 11 other Sunshine Coast schools: Kin Kin, Montville, Sunshine Coast Grammar, Tewantin, Noosaville, North Arm, Palmwoods, Peregian Beach Community College, St Thomas More College, Siena Catholic College and Chancellor State College.  

She is soon to start her 13th edible school garden at Cooran State School.

With her help, children at these schools have learned to till the soil,

make compost, grow, chop and lay mulch, plant seeds and seedlings, nurture crops, and harvest the fruits and vegetables of their labour.

At harvest celebrations, they are encouraged to take pride in their hard work, and to take a few timid steps further along the path to good food by chefs, who whip up dishes before their eyes using produce picked from the garden.

And that is where Leonie enjoys the fruits of her labour €“ watching the kids eat and enjoy what they have grown.

€œAs a parent, you know how hard it is to get kids to eat greens, but I watch the kids in the garden. One does it and they all do it,€ she said.

Leonie was brought up with a big vegetable patch, carefully tended by her father, in the backyard.  She was more into low-maintenance gardening at the time, preferring her cactus collection to vegetables because the succulents allowed more time for play.  But by adulthood, she had turned into a green thumb with little gardens wherever she had the chance.

As a young mum in Victoria, she jumped at a girlfriend€™s suggestion that they do a horticulture course together €œto get out of the house€.  

But after she moved to Noosa and became involved with the local permaculture group, her interest in edible gardening moved along.

Fellow permaculturalist Fiona Bull, whom Leonie helped with a Nambour State School project, suggested Leonie pick up where

she was leaving off when she decided to go back to teaching.  But it was the fallow garden at Sunshine Beach that finally convinced her to do it.

One of Leonie€™s greatest success stories was at Palmwoods State School: the first edible school garden which was built from scratch.

€œI was wondering if anyone was going to turn up to help, and 80 people showed up,€ she said.  €œI didn€™t know what to do with them all.€

Leonie said the gardens were very much community projects, with help sought from parents, grandparents and interested locals.

They source materials and build the gardens, usually in over a couple of days, so that the children can get in and active quickly. Slow Food Noosa supports the programs by sponsoring some of the gardens.  Each garden happens only at the request of a school.  €œI never contact a school,€

Leonie said. €œIt€™s some extra work for the teachers: they have to make sure it€™s going to get watered when I€™m not there. And it€™s got to be more than one person who wants it.

It€™s got to be a team, so that if one person leaves, it doesn€™t just fall over.€

She said some teachers chose to work the gardens into the curriculum for their classes, although it was not just all about learning.

€œIt€™s a chance for the kids to get outside,€ Leonie said. It€™s a healthy thing to do. And it€™s a chance for them to get dirty.

€œSome of them don€™t like to get dirty because they€™re in a very indoors environment at home. It€™s a foreign concept to them.€

Leonie said more children than she expected had gardens at home, but it was the ones who started gardening that pleased her even more.

€œThe most exciting thing is the amount of kids that say, €˜We€™ve set up a vege garden at home€™. The parents must groan about it, but if that€™s the greatest insult I get, fine. Bring it on".