Entries closing soon for School Garden Challenge

For Immediate Release
1 October 2012

Entries closing soon for School Garden Challenge

Entries to the Tui School Garden Challenge are closing soon, and Tui and Mitre 10 are urging New Zealand kindergartens, primary and intermediate schools not to miss the opportunity to practice and showcase their gardening talents.

More than 600 schools from across the country have already entered the annual competition, which challenges young New Zealand students to design, plan, grow and maintain a garden on their school grounds.

Once the competition closes on October 26 a panel of experts comprised of Tui and Mitre 10 staff will judge the submitted gardens on design, innovation and environmental elements such as recycling and composting to identify 10-15 finalists before the top three and overall winner are selected and announced on November 19.

Tui Products Ltd Managing Director Don Forgie says they are delighted with the number of entries they have received and are excited about the entries that are still to come.

“When the competition opened in July we had a huge rush with nearly 300 entries received in just one day. Since then we’ve received a steady stream of entries.”

“We’ve seen great ideas and enthusiasm for gardening from the many photos we’ve received from entrants. It’s certainly going to be a tough task judging.”

A host of top prizes are up for grabs with the overall winner receiving a $1000 Mitre 10 voucher, $1000 Tui Garden voucher, a ‘Can O Worms’ worm farm from Tumbleweed and a wheelbarrow. A number of spot prizes have been won with more to be awarded in the final four weeks before entries close.

Westport North School claimed the first spot prize. The school built a new garden using recycled material, such as tyres, bottles and even old fridge shelving to raise seedlings. Their compost Chimney-bots secured an early win for the team.

“Our garden vision is to create an edible impressionist garden that will explode with colour and flavour! We have chosen a range of edible flowers that will hopefully self seed and spread throughout our garden over time, we also have seasonal vegetables that we intend to rotate through the seasons, and we hope to gradually add more young fruit trees,” Carol Ferrier from Westport North School said.

Winners of the second spot prize, Featherston Primary School, created a soil-less garden, proving their budding entrepreneurship through selling ‘worm wine’ from their worm garden at their local supermarket to fundraise for additional projects. They also made hanging pea and bean gardens by using recycled milk containers, painting murals, building bird feeders and planting flowers designed to encourage bee pollination.

Pre-School competitors are also excelling in the garden. Methven Pre-School have recycled plastic bottles to create a glasshouse and Warkworth Kindergarten has made a scarecrow and bird feeders. Gore’s Oxford Kindergarten has created a strawberry ladder and ABC Hei Hei in Christchurch has used recycled plastic containers to make a water catcher.

To register your school in the Tui Garden Schools challenge, visit http://www.tuigarden.co.nz/competition/2012-tui-school-garden-challenge

Entries close soon!

ENDS

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