We at Hills Montessori are blessed with a beautiful natural outdoor area with a food forest, a worm farm, compost bins, a butterfly garden and two very cheeky chickens. The wealth of knowledge and practical education children receive merely by utilising this environment is truly beyond what book-learning can offer.
Last year, we thought of adding more to this environment by starting a wildlife garden with native plants. Through reaching out to community members from the Hills Shire Council and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Landcare Network, we received so much support, ideas, advice and help from various people who came on board to make this dream a reality. Even when COVID was bringing everyone’s spirits down during its early days, the Native Garden gave us so much hope and children and families worked together towards one goal.
Even though families could not physically be present at the planting, they contributed by donating plants and watching the garden grow. When new leaves sprouted and little buds appeared in our native violet plants, kangaroo paws and princess lavenders, what joy it brought to those little faces! When glittering dragonflies, bashful butterflies and ant-like stingless bees buzzed about the flowers, how the children’s eyes sparkled!
We have watched our new garden grow for a little more than a year now and it is thriving with so much love given to it by little hands and hearts. To extend more on this love for nature, this year we installed a frog pond with the help of Bunnings. What excitement there was on the day of its installation! The children loved every minute of it and contributed to fill up the pond, plant some water plants and connect the solar powered water fountain. We are now eagerly waiting for neighbouring frogs to find their new home.
Loving nature is one thing, experiencing nature is another. Children at Hills Montessori really experience nature, from composting waste to, cleaning the chicken coop, to using garden herbs to bake bread, to tasting edible flowers from the garden, they are really living the nature dream. Their spirits are free, calm and happy when they are in this amazing outdoor environment and with such a vast area of natural goodness, their little hands are always busy caring and nurturing for nature and for each other.