Primary school has special visitor

AUSTRALIAN landscape gardener and television presenter Costa Georgiadis visited Buninyong Primary School’s Scotsburn campus last Friday to share his passion for protecting the environment.

Students were able to show Georgiadis several of the school’s sustainability practices and he presented them with a series of books about the environment.

Georgiadis said it was important to help children understand the little things they can do to protect the planet.

“This is the level where we get traction, because the big picture, that can be almost paralysing and people feel a little overwhelmed,” he said.

“Here children can learn and understand the waterways better, plant waterway plants, make habitat, provide more habitat for insects.

“The main thing we need to be conscious of is we don’t want children to get anxiety, they need to be aware, but we need to make a strong bridge between actions and activism as the antidote to anxiety.”

The school is involved with a range of sustainability initiatives including Energy Breakthrough, growing a vegetable garden, and looking after chickens.

“The kids were very excited they he was coming as at Scotsburn campus we do a family rotation where one of them is sustainability,” said teacher Ana Anderson.

“We do all the gardening and everything around the campus ourselves.”

Georgiadis encouraged the community to make their own small steps towards sustainability.

“The more little steps we make, the bigger the change will be,” he said.

“That way we are motivated and we are not overwhelmed.”