School gets creative on enviro day
A Palmerston North school has created a new area for teaching children about tikanga and the environment.
West End School held an enviro day on Friday where it established a rongoā (traditional Mā ori medicine) and pō whiri garden in what was previously an unused space.
Pupils, teachers and volunteers were filling the garden with soil and planting trees.
The efforts followed on from when the school planted a community orchard last year.
Principal Matt Kennedy said it was fantastic for the children’s learning about rongoā medicine and also strengthen its tikanga (customs) for school pō whiri.
The school, which has been working with Palmerston North iwi Rangitā ne on the project, received a grant from Keep New Zealand Beautiful for the garden.
It is an area people can gather in when coming for pō whiri at the school and a regular koha at pō whiri are plants, so the plants can be put in the new garden.
Parent and volunteer Georgie Rynhart has been keenly involved in the project. He dug out part of the area and was planting trees.
There are four seats to represent the school’s four values, the four pillars of healing and the four winds.
Louise Ellis, the school’s enviro lead, said the children came up with the ideas then worked out how to put them into practice. They have created murals that showed the life cycles of animals, including tuna and butterflies. The school recently did the first harvest from the orchard, and gathered kumara.