Schools Out

Gardening classes are finished for the year and Team Trouble can only cheer about that. So can Doug!

Gourds Going In

We managed to get our Gourds planted before this year’s school term finishes.  Doug says by the time we get back to school next year we should find plenty of Gourds starting to form.

New Faces In Our Garden

Who’s that turning up in our garden?  Why it’s Miles, Amy, Kaylee, Jacob and Liam.  Ana and Kaylee have joined our team for this term.

Bottle Gourds

We did not get our Nga Puhi gourd seeds to grow.  Doug said this may be because it is too cold in Taranaki but we have manage to get Bottle Gourd seeds to germinate.  We hope to plant them before this school term finishes.  We can still decorate them, carve them or make birdhouses out of them  -  Click on the "Gourds" page above 

Conservation Week

It is Conservation Week so today we visited the Nowell’s Lakes Walkway at Hawera to plant Swan Plants.  These plants will attract the brightly coloured Monarch Butterfly who will lay their eggs on these plants.  The caterpillars that hatch will feed off the Swan Pant to grow to latter turn into a butterfly's.  Doug told us that Wild Flowers have been planted at the Walkway to give the butterfly’s food also as they like the sweet nectar that these Wild Flowers have  -  Click on the "Conservation" page above

  

Horticultural Society Cup

Our Habitat Heroes had a visit from the Hawera Horticultural Society who checked out our garden and said that we could keep the cup for best school garden for another year.  They also gave us packets of seeds and a $20 Bunnings Warehouse Gift Card 

Spring Time

It is spring time in the garden and everything is growing.  We are hoping that all these blossoms will turn into apples  

Maori Pattern

Jacob traces out a Maori pattern design that he has found onto our gourd. The Maori pattern for carving has developed greatly since the first Polynesians came to New Zealand. The earliest settlers brought with them a fairly simple set of basic designs and a small range of largely geometrical surface patterns with straight lines rather than the curvilinear patterns almost universally used today. 

Gourd Seeds

This is the start of our study program with the planting of our Gourd seeds.  Jacob has new plants for our garden, Miles holds an old Gourd shell that Doug brought to us from the Nowell’s Lakes Walkway and Jason has the neat little hot house that was donated to us by Bunning’s of Hawera and in which the seeds are planted.