NECC Fruit Orchard
We’ve been successful with our application for a 2021 Woolworths Junior Landcare Grant for our project, Nicholls Early Childhood Centre Orchard! The aim of our project is to create sustainable food production through a citrus orchard so the children can be involved in growing their own fruit.
Sustainable food production assists in reducing food wastage and food miles, teaching children about where their food comes from and how it is produced. The Nicholls Early Childhood Centre Orchard will provide fresh seasonal fruits for the centre chef to use in food preparation and for children to eat fresh off the trees. Any excess will be shared with families and members of our community. By growing fruit, we are helping to minimise food waste as we will only harvest what we need, and our families will also benefit from excess produce.
Nicholls Early Childhood Centre is one of 1,609 primary schools and early learning centres throughout Australia receiving a Woolworths Junior Landcare grant to help grow our next generation of environmental champions.
The grants are being funded with a 10c contribution from each sale of the Woolworths Bag for Good at full price, which was launched in 2018 when Woolworths went single-use plastic bag free.
The children and educators are looking forward to working and learning from this project and we’ll keep you updated on the results.
Progress
Six wine barrels have been delivered and placed into our outdoor yard, ready for planting the fruit trees.
Planting
The children and educators planted our six fruit trees, and they look fantastic! There was lots of talk amongst the children and educators about the types of trees, what fruit they would produce and how to care for them.
The selection of fruit trees are:
- Dwarf Lemonicious
- Dwarf Sublime (Lime)
- Dwarf Tahitian Lime
- Dwarf Grapefruit Rio red
- Dwarf Mandarin
- Dwarf Orange Valencia
© Copyright Nicholls Early Childhood Centre