Working Bee #78 at Orewa Beach School had been a long time coming. The school first reached out to Oke almost two years earlier with a vision to create a dedicated outdoor learning space for their students. Like many schools, funding and timing meant the project had to wait. But on Saturday 2 May, thanks to support from Lotto New Zealand and an incredible effort from the school community, that vision finally became a reality.
From the moment volunteers arrived, there was a real sense of excitement in the air. Parents, whānau, staff and students all rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in. This wasn’t a project being delivered to the community. It was a project being built by the community.
Throughout the day, Birdies raised garden beds were assembled, positioned and filled, creating the foundations for a productive growing space. A Morrifield tunnel house was installed to extend the growing season and provide hands-on learning opportunities throughout the year, while the team from Gary’s Garden Sheds supplied and installed one of their fantastic sheds to house the tools and resources needed to keep the space thriving long after the working bee was finished.
One of the highlights of the day was seeing so many tamariki involved from start to finish. Whether they were helping assemble garden beds, moving materials, planting seedlings or simply asking questions about what they could grow, the space was already beginning to do what it was designed to do: connect children with nature, food and learning.
As the final wheelbarrows were emptied and the last screws tightened, the transformation was easy to see. What had started as an empty patch of grass was now a functioning outdoor classroom ready to become part of everyday school life.
Some projects take longer than expected to get off the ground. Orewa Beach School was one of those projects. But standing in the finished space surrounded by smiling volunteers, proud students and freshly built gardens, it was hard not to think the same thing: better late than never.
