Connecting tuckshops with school gardens

In this episode we talk to Projects Manager for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, Natasha Grogan. Natasha shares how the program works, tips for getting started, and the joy it can bring to school children. We also dive into how the school garden can cross over to the school tuckshop.

The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation provides the inspiration, information, professional development and support for educators to deliver pleasurable food education to children and young people in Australia.

Pleasurable food education is a fun, hands-on approach to teaching children and young people about fresh, seasonal, delicious food so they form positive food habits for life.

Delivered through a kitchen garden program, pleasurable food education has an array of health, wellbeing, education and community benefits.

https://www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au/

About the guest:

Natasha Grogan is a Support and Projects Manager at the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.  Back in 2008 and 2012, she was a SAKGF garden specialist for two primary schools in Melbourne. 

After four and a half years as a garden specialist she started her own small business, The Sage Garden, which specialised in teaching children, predominantly in the early years, to grow their own organic food. 

In 2020 Natasha returned the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation as their Early Childhood Project Officer using her experience and passion for teaching in early childhood to support and guide members through the kitchen garden program. 

In 2022 she moved into a management role leading the kitchen garden team to deliver the Program Australia-wide.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by the Queensland Association of School Tuckshops and funded by the Queensland Government through Health and Wellbeing Queensland.

Transcript

Deanne Wooden  0:08  
Hello everyone, this is Deanne Wooden and you're listening to The Talking Healthier Tuckshops Podcast, the show that talks all things school tuckshops. This podcast is proudly brought to you by the Queensland Association of School Tuckshops and funded by the Queensland Government through Health and Wellbeing Queensland. From the health of your kids and family, to your own well being and happiness. We'll explore topics that matter to you, giving you easy ways to implement them in your tuckshop and your day to day life.

Natasha Grogan  0:44  
Today we're talking about school gardens and the wonderful connection they can have with the tuckshop. We are joined by Natasha Grogan, Support and Projects Manager at the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. Natasha has a wealth of experience working in gardens and schools. She is a qualified horticulturalist has trained as a primary school teacher, and was a kitchen garden foundation garden specialist for four years until 2012 after running her own business, teaching young children to grow organic food. Natasha returned to the foundation in 2020 and now leads the kitchen garden team to deliver the program Australia-wide. Welcome, Natasha. It's really great to have you along on the Healthier Tuckshops Podcast. Looking forward to having this wonderful conversation around school gardens and the connections with school tuckshops.

Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Deanne Wooden  1:36  
Okay, so Natasha, I've been aware of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation since I first worked in the education sector in Brisbane back in the mid 2000s. From what I understand the program is about increasing food literacy and children through positive experiences with growing and cooking vegetables. But I am aware that that may sound a bit nutritionist in a way to talk about it. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about the history and purpose of the program and how it has evolved over time?

Natasha Grogan  2:10  
Yeah, absolutely. So we will fund founded by Stephanie Alexander herself, who is an Australian icon, in 2004. And the purpose was educating primary school aged children to develop positive food habits for life. And that was through growing fresh, seasonal, delicious food. And then over the past 20 years, we've evolved to meet the needs of children and young people and educators Australia wide. And now the program exists in across the three sectors. So we're in early childhood, we're in primary schools, and we're in secondary schools. And I guess what we do now, you know, in 2023, is that we provide kitchen garden members with the inspiration information, professional development, human resources and support to run their kitchen garden programs. As unique as they are Australia wide. You know, we've got some schools that have 17 students, and we've got some schools that have 2000 plus students. So we like to be able to meet the needs of educators Australia wide from early childhood all the way through to the secondary years and meeting needs of curriculum. So it has a real impact.

Deanne Wooden  3:28  
Thank you. Is that is the curriculum aspect of the program present in early childhood, primary and secondary? Or is it just in one area?

Natasha Grogan  3:38  
We've developed it to so in early childhood, it's the NQF, the National Quality Standard and the EY LF. So we've made sure that the program targets that within the foundation, we talk about pleasurable food education. And that's about it being a joy and a pleasure for the children to be a part of this growing, harvesting, preparing sharing cycle. But we talk about how it also has to be a pleasure for the educators. And to do that it can't be an additional thing. Oh, we also have to run this program. So we see it a part of our role to make sure that those educators in early childhood primary and secondary are supported to link it back to their curriculum, so they can tick a few boxes while having a pleasurable time with the children. That's that's a real aim for us. 

Deanne Wooden  4:29  
I can see how it can feel like a bit of an add on sometimes I know that schools and teachers are very busy places and people and trying to put an extra program into the school is always a challenge, I guess and I know that schools don't take those decisions lightly. It needs to be really well accepted across the school community and integrated into as many different areas and like you say ticking those boxes for different curriculum opportunities. For the teachers and and I guess other elements of the school community as well. When I first was aware of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, something that struck me back then was, it was it seemed to be more about that pleasurable experience of growing and eating food. And there didn't seem to be a lot of nutrition component. And obviously, you know, I'm a dietitian by background, so I was really looking for that. Has that evolved over the time, as well? Do you think?

Natasha Grogan  5:33  
It depends how you frame it, I guess what we've really wanted to do and nutrition of course, and health as a part of this is get children to eat fresh, these little delicious food that's nutritious and delicious. Without using a language of you must eat X Y Z per day to be a healthy child. It was more about though into the garden, how wonderful how wonderous. Look at those tomatoes, don't you want to eat them? Yes, you're eating them off the park. You know, it needed to be a bit. The vision was to be more holistic than that. But absolutely, there's nutritional, of course, benefits.

Deanne Wooden  6:12  
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so moving on to I guess, not just talking about the actual program, but talking about school gardens in schools, I know that school gardens can be a fraught topic. And again, when I was working in the education sector, my role was to work with teachers thinking about how to integrate nutrition into the curriculum across all of the subject areas. So how could you integrate nutrition into your maths? How can you integrate it into English, you know, procedural writing, writing a recipe or maths, doing measurements, etc. And a lot of the interest or the the biggest interest I got was when I talked about how a school garden could be integrated into the curriculum, and could be a really great way to teach children about nutrition. But like you were saying, with the foundation, it's about increasing that pleasurable aspect and getting kids excited about eating the produce that comes from the garden. So it was a really popular topic when I was working in the education sector. But there was also a lot of barriers, I guess, around gardens in school, and there was a lot of debate whether it was a wise and sustainable use of resources within the school. So things like infrastructure costs, and the setup costs, the ongoing maintenance needs of gardens, because gardens don't stop needing maintenance over the school holidays, especially at the Christmas school holidays that go for so long. Also, you know, whether it's relevant to the Teaching and Learning Program of the school, and whether it can be integrated into the curriculum. So how does the kitchen garden successfully deal with all of these issues? And you've talked a little bit about curriculum, but maybe you know, that infrastructure and set up and the long term maintenance of the garden over time?

Natasha Grogan  7:59  
Yeah, I think you're spot on in saying that a garden requires work, we know that you have to own that. From the get go, it can't be a fantasy. We want to have this ideally, a garden that produces all this food, you've got to be aware of the work that goes into it. infrastructure, maintenance, you know, even just watering over the holidays, how does this all happen? And I was a garden specialist for four and a half years with the foundation back in 2008. So I've been privy to all of these conversations. And they're worth really understanding and looking at before you tackle something like this. That said, in 20 years of working with children and gardens, for all the work that goes into it, the benefit of the program, so far outweighs the infrastructure, the maintenance, the conversations about who has the chickens, or where does the worm farm go, it is such a space for growth, beyond education. It's community growth, personal growth, you see children that don't necessarily shine or have an opportunity to shine in the classroom, become someone in the garden or become someone else in the kitchen. There's engagement for families, for grandparents, cultural diversity, conversations about history, and it's so rich in what it offers that once you get past that initial hurdle of who what how, why you kind of go see it in action to understand why it's so brilliant. 

Deanne Wooden  9:36  
Yeah, totally I get that. But if we go back to I guess the the basic needs of setting up a garden, what are the things that are school needs to have in place to start a garden, whether it's through the Kitchen Garden Foundation, or just you know them wanting to start their own garden? What are the key elements that a school would need to have in place to get that started?

Natasha Grogan  10:00  
you've got to have the right space. If you don't have enough sun, if you don't have access to water, if you haven't worked out what your soil is, you're already going to be in trouble. So first of all, you have to make sure it doesn't have to be big. It can be a wine barrel in the middle of the courtyard, you know, that is a garden that is a kitchen garden program at the beginning. But if you don't have that clear, you know, I've seen schools that have put a lot of effort into gardens sort of covered by gum trees, or, you know, and you're already in trouble. So I think that's the first one. And I think understanding your community understanding who's going to be a part of this, who do I need to make sure that this moves forward is important? Am i answering your question, or am I starting to get too excited?

Deanne Wooden  10:48  
No, no, that they're good, good tips for sure. I was sort of thinking from a staffing or personnel perspective within the school. I guess the the champion of the garden can come from many different places within the school community. I know when I was working in education, and I started a school garden network, and we had meetings and the people that came to those meetings were really wide and varied. So more often they'll groundsman, but sometimes they were classroom teachers, sometimes they were tuckshop conveners, sometimes our admin staff at the school, so it was really, really quite wide and varied. Do you have a recommendation of you know who could or should be in the school community that sort of is the champion?

Natasha Grogan  11:35  
We have a recommendation that your program is led by a team of two, and that from the beginning of your program, you're very clear about who that team have to now across the three sectors, particularly in early childhood, that could be a parent and the leader of the three year old room in a primary school, that could be the grade three teacher and perhaps the language teacher, it doesn't really matter. But as long as there's clarity that there are two people who are like you said, the champions, and that, if they were to move on, who do they then hand the program on to because what I think Australia wide with programs like this, you see is that it's a person who's it's a passion project, and they love it, and they love the garden, that they've got X amount of time. And when they move on, which they do, because children grow up that then whose shoulders does it fall on. So the hope is that it becomes embedded, but that relationship of handing over the baton is very clear within the community. Now we've got early childhood services, where it's run by one, of course, it can be run by one person, but we all like a buddy to is what we provide all that expertise to help support. So how do you find that to what what kind of, you know, where they've been got documents that are just what kind of roles and responsibilities will they have? How can they run meetings? What, you know, what are some emails look like? We we try and support that for the educators as much as possible? 

Deanne Wooden  13:03  
Yeah, I also had a question around the costs. But you know, I really love what you said that a wine barrel in the middle of a courtyard can be a school kitchen garden. And I guess that answers my question around cost, the cost, it can be quite varied depending on, you know, what the size of the garden is, and what the infrastructure the school decides on is. So, you know, I know that there's lots of opportunities for grants. In Queensland, the Queensland Government has a grant around managing organic school waste, which is open towards the end of each year. So we know of a tuckshop convener, for example, who applied for that grant and got it and used it to set up a school garden and a composting system. So you know, that there's ways and means that schools can can access some funds to set up school gardens, or they can join a program like the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, as well and get some help there.

Natasha Grogan  13:57  
And I think that's a really important thing, you know, what we talk about the foundation, and we're, we're a membership based program. So once you join us, Program members, you're a part of the program for two years, and then it's a renewal. But within that, we give you all of that support. And the idea is start small, dream big, you don't need to have a huge productive garden, and the state of the art kitchen, you can have the wine barrel, and you can have what we call a kitchen trolley, which you can wheel around to the rooms and it's got a mortar and pestle and it's got a grater and it's got measuring, you know, it can be very basic. The idea is to get the children enthusiastic, and the young people enthusiastic about growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing. So I think start small dream big is my favorite way to talk to any educator about this program.

Deanne Wooden  14:46  
I love that. Thanks very much, Natasha. All right. So obviously we're here to talk about tuckshops as an organization, and I know that you call them canteens well in every other state in Australia except for Queensland, to us, we're very keen on increasing the vegetable content of tuckshop menus. And we're also keen on promoting environmentally responsible practices in the tuckshop. So with those goals in mind, for us, it makes sense that if a school has a garden already, then a connection with the tuckshop can have dual benefits, you know, it can, the garden can provide produce for the tuckshop menu, and the tuckshop can be a source of waste, food scraps for for the garden as well. Do you have examples of where this is happening in schools in the kitchen garden foundation where there's a strong relationship between the program that you run and also the school canteen or school tuckshop?

Natasha Grogan  15:44  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is, it's so important that the children's see, and young people see have the crossover. You know, life doesn't work in isolation. And community doesn't work in isolation. So if you're growing the food, and you've got a surplus of silverbeet. And then the next week on the canteen, there's a silverbeet frittata, you know, I see this in action now. So we have got that actually, I can pass on some articles, but lots within Queensland in particular, where there is a marriage between that tuckshop and their kitchen garden programs, where the children are creating some of the food that goes into the canteen.

Deanne Wooden  16:29  
So I've seen lots of different I guess, connections between the tuckshop and the school gardens. So I've heard of schools having a pizza garden where they're growing things like tomatoes and capsicum and basil. And then those that produce goes into the menu item on the tuckshop. And I've also seen schools that will produce a pizza garden, you know, seedlings, so they would have a tomato, capsicum and a basil plant, for example. And parents can buy those. And then the the proceeds go into the P and C, for example, as a fundraising activity. I've seen examples of where tuckshops will have the produce from the garden on display in a basket at the counter at the tuckshop. And that's a really great way of showcasing what's being produced. At a time when students are up there getting some food, they're actually seeing this lovely fresh produce. I've seen tuckshop menus that have a daily garden special. So you know, they don't specify in advance what that special might be. It's really driven by what's coming out of the garden from a harvest perspective. So yeah, there's so many great ways that I've already seen connections between gardens and tuckshop. So, yeah, loving, loving what I'm hearing from you, apart from this connection with the tuckshop. What are some other benefits that you've seen with gardens in schools? And you did sort of allude to those in the first question. So if you wouldn't mind expanding a little bit more on other benefits that you've seen with, with gardens in schools?

Natasha Grogan  18:06  
Well, I think, you know, for me, the first thing that always springs to mind is connecting children back to nature, it's connecting them back to their physical bodies, but having them have a respect and appreciation for their natural world in a way that they probably hadn't might not have, you know, you've got more urban children. They're not aware of what a corn looks like, or what a pumpkin looks like, you know, what an adventure. But I think having them be really physical and, and focused on something is such a beautiful thing for a lot of children. It's also a very good teacher working in nature, because nothing comes quickly. And there's often disappointment, you know, that's the truth. 

Deanne Wooden  18:53  
I think you're talking about my gardening efforts there.

Natasha Grogan  18:56  
I'm talking about all about gardening, you know that the truth is, you might fall in love with a big, you know, Russian tomato, and by the next week, a rat has found it. So how do you deal with the disappointment of that? What did that look like? How do we solve that? How do we move on from it and plant another tomato and not feel defeated, you know, but then there's also that celebration reward, so that all this effort is taken so long for something to grow, and now we get to celebrate it together. So I think I really love that connection with nature that you have for the children, I think there's an opportunity to form new relationships, whether that's within their peer group, or within parent volunteer, it could be a parent volunteer with very little English or it could be a parent volunteer who has a skill set. That's not you know, like a wood worker or you know, something like that. So there's a lot of opportunities for development of relationships. And there's a lot of opportunity for children, like I said in the beginning, which I think is one of my favorite things is for children to shine You know, there's a lot of children that I've worked with over the years, perhaps they're developmentally delayed, perhaps they have issues at home, you know that there can be a whole breadth of things, where this is a space for them to find themselves. And I think that's always very, very exciting to watch. The list is endless.

Deanne Wooden  20:22  
I can imagine. Yeah, I've heard you know that gardens are a good place for disengaged students. But I've also heard criticism of that sort of position, because it can be seen sometimes as a bit of a babysitter. And also, it might be seen as a reward, if a child is not behaving as expected in the classroom, they can go out to the garden. And of course, all the kids want to go out in the garden and have a play. So how, you know, for those students that are disengaged, how to school garden, sort of walk the line between not being too much of a reward, but also, you know, helping to bring those students back into the school environment?

Natasha Grogan  21:01  
I mean, that's such a huge question, isn't it? Because it's so dependent on your class, your capacity, because at the end of the day, shouldn't every child have the opportunity to shine, they're not shiny in the classroom, it's not a reward to tell them to go outside and learn outside, if you're clever enough educator and you have capacity, they're not vibing on the science classes, science in the garden, you can go on work that way. So everything can always work to your advantage. And the aim is that the child thrives. And if it's seen as a, oh, well, you just get to walk around the garden. I don't think you're doing your job properly. 

Deanne Wooden  21:42  
Yeah, and you know, going back to what you said that the garden needs to have be a source of enjoyment for everyone in the school, and I think, a teacher, if their purpose is, you know, to educate children and to help children to learn. If they can see that happening in the school garden, they can only be supportive of that as an option for them.

Natasha Grogan  21:59  
Yeah, absolutely. And then hopefully, we have, you know, young thinkers that can see outside the box, and, you know, they're committed to something and they find their passion. And that's a job well done in my book. Yeah.

Deanne Wooden  22:13  
Okay. Well, I think we've come to the end of the little chat today. Thank you so much, Natasha, it's been wonderful talking to you, and learning a lot more about Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, and just, you know, the ins and outs of gardens in schools in general. And I hope that our listeners are feeling inspired. And also, you know, getting some of those really practical, back to basics, tips about getting involved in a school garden and understanding that it doesn't have to be a massive, massive obstacle. It can be really, really simple and starting small and dreaming big is such fantastic advice. So thank you so much again for your time.

Natasha Grogan  22:53  
My absolute pleasure. And if anyone ever has any questions, please reach out. That's what we're here for five days a week to support educators. So if you have any questions or seeking advice, please, please reach out. We'll, I'm sure you'll give all of our details. 

Deanne Wooden  23:08  
Yeah, thank you. 

The Talking Healthier Tuckshops Podcast is produced by the team at QAST, and made possible thanks to funding from the Queensland Government through Health and Wellbeing Queensland. Visit qast.org.au to learn more about other program opportunities, and for the latest tuckshop tips, ideas and advice.