Kitchen Garden Program Launches at Orange High
Orange High school have just become a pilot school for the ‘Kitchen Garden Program,’ only one of two schools selected in NSW.
Stephanie Alexander AO, Founder of the Kitchen Garden Foundation, believes the program for Secondary years can help support Aussie teens to form positive food habits for life by helping them find the joy in growing, harvesting and cooking their own meals.
“When you know how to cook, you know that good food doesn’t have to be time-consuming or costly and is the opposite of a chore. Learning to know and love fresh, seasonal, delicious food is as basic as understanding where food comes from and learning a few simple cooking skills. This gives young people a lot of confidence.
“The program is designed to get students’ hands dirty and experience the thrill of growing their own fruit, vegetables and herbs. Then turning their harvest into delicious meals to share with their classmates. There’s nothing like it to create a sense of pride and achievement.”
Food Tech Teacher, Tammy Nash and Agriculture Teacher Mel Campbell will work together to coordinate the program for the students.
Mel Campbell said “The kids were involved with the initial building of the space and have made it look how it does today, they have a real sense of ownership with it, they say ‘I planted that or I built that garden’, so they become really connected to it. What was a concrete space is now a lot of staff and students’ favourite spot to hang out in.”
Tammy continued, “It’s such a good sense of wellbeing for the kids and we are only just getting started we want to build some more gardens and put a pizza oven out here and bring in tables and chairs and make it a real learning space.
At the moment we are using the space for things like art class or working on assessments and the kids just love it, teachers come and have lunch out here too.”
Principal Chad Bliss explained, “We are very proud to be a part of this pilot. For us it’s about giving students an opportunity to learn about sustainability, to learn about biodiversity and to operate our home economics program so our kids have the chance to grow the produce, pick the produce, cook the produce, with a real paddock to plate philosophy.
Being part of this is a fantastic opportunity for our school to learn from others and with others and in part, grow our knowledge and expertise, both from an agriculture point of view and hospitality point of view.”
So far chillies, beans, tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers are growing nicely in the new space. Congratulations OHS!
More than half of Aussie teens (51%) do not know how many serves of fruit and vegetables they should be eating a day with nearly one in five (17%) admitting to not eating vegetables on a weekly basis.