Design edible garden

Keep New Zealand Beautiful has launched the Kai Garden Competition, an opportunity for pre-school, primary and intermediate aged students to design, build and grow an edible garden for their school with up to $15,000 in grants to be won.

The Kai Garden Competition encourages students to focus on (kai) edible and/or rongoa¯ (traditional Ma¯ori medicinal) plants, and to use sustainable or reclaimed materials where possible.

The 10 winning designs will each receive a donation towards building and maintaining an edible garden.

The competition has been designed to work in with the New Zealand School Curriculum. Design entries into the Kai Garden Competition are open until 11.59pm on June 17 and the winners will be announced on June 27.

Visit www.knzb.org.nz for information and to enter your school’s design.

Heather Saunderson, CEO of Keep New Zealand Beautiful said, “the Kai Garden Competition is a great opportunity to teach environmental kaitiakitanga, or stewardship, helping make students responsible and proud caretakers of their little patch.”

The Kai Garden Competition is one of many programmes that makes up Keep New Zealand Beautiful’s strategy, all of which aim to address climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. “We’ve become reliant on vegetables trucked in from far-away destinations, and often shipped or even flown in from overseas to satisfy our demands for out-of-season fruits and vegetables, when a small part of the solution is right there in that vacant plot of garden space”.