Lal Lal digs in for school’s veggie garden

LAL Lal residents gathered last month to help give their primary school vegetable garden a makeover.

Lal Lal Primary School principal Siobhan Gosney said members of the town’s catchment Landcare group offered their assistance during the April holidays.

The volunteers weeded, placed mulch, installed a water system and completed other tasks to help protect the garden from bushfire.

“The gardens were already there,” Gosney said. “It was just a matter of maintaining them, just fixing them up.

“And while we were doing it, we found some potatoes, so we cooked those up and had those for lunch.”

She said the vegetable garden is used to assist the school’s Learning Through Lunch program.

The program has the senior pupils of the school’s 36-strong cohort prepare a meal. The whole school community then sits down and enjoys the food together.

“We go through different continents,” Gosney said. “So this term, we are going to China and the kids will cook up a Chinese meal.”

She said the program offered a range of benefits.

“It’s all about actually sitting down at the mealtime and the communication we have around it,” the principal said.

“It’s nutritious food, we talk about food while we do it, and even if they might not eat certain things at home, once they’re at school they’ll at least have a go.”

She said it’s important the children understand where their food comes from before it gets to the supermarket.

“It’s really good to see that we plant it, and then we grow it, and then we harvest it, and then eat it,” she said.

Gosney was grateful for the volunteers’ efforts.

“A school can benefit from having the community involved and having a partnership with them,” she said.