Young green thumbs in Bolinda have their shovels ready to dig in on the school’s new project.
Bolinda Primary School has received $10,000 from Macedon Ranges council’s community funding grants to revitalise the school’s community garden.
Principal Jordan Chamerski said the project will transform the space.
“Our current garden needs a lot of work and it’s something that’s been in the pipeline for a long time, but we’ve never really been able to have avenues to get funding for it,” he said.
“We had the idea of wanting to transform that space into something for the whole community, and not just our small school community.”
The project will turn the garden into an accessible, water-wise and pest-proof community space that supports food security, sustainability, and inclusion for students, families and the wider community.
“This project will get the community involved and would bring some life into that vegetable garden,” Mr Chamerski said.
“We do have problems with rabbits around here, so trying to get some garden beds and raised garden beds will help eliminate that and actually help this garden thrive rather than it always being a battle trying to keep it going.”
The garden’s benefits will be felt throughout the wider Bolinda community.
“It’s showing that we’re not forgotten out here, even though it’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of town,” Mr Chamerski said.
“It’s really saying to the community that it’s worth investing out here, and we’re just hoping this community garden is going to be a place where people will come and look after and enjoy our space too at the school.”
Mr Chamerski said the students were also excited about the project.
“The kids love getting out here and being involved in harvesting,” he said.
“We do a produce swap here at school too, so every month we take our produce from our garden and at the end of the day we let our school community know and they’ll come in and swap, they’ll take things, they’ll drop things off for us to use in our kitchen garden program and it’s a really good program we’ve started this year.”
