Marden Senior College staff and students have been working with Project Officers from the AMLRNRM Board, the Urban Forests Biodiversity Program the Norwood Payneham St Peter’s Council for 12 years. During that time we have planted thousands of local native plants with 90 indigenous species now established at the site.
The project was developed for Senior Secondary Students to link their Environmental Studies course to a practical hands-on field work. The re-vegetation work has re-created an area similar to the original vegetation cover of this area.
Marden Senior College has also enacted a Sustainable Schools program, linking native vegetation gardens in the school grounds with the River Torrens re-vegetation work.

Watch our movie:  Marden Senior College working with the community to save the locals

and view the pdf of  “the locals”.

Totally Wild  also did a story on us.

This Year’s Focus

This year’s focus is a first step towards developing ‘Our Patch’ as a unique teaching and learning resource. We have applied for an NRM Action Grant to develop approved bilingual (Kaurna/ English) interpretive signs, brochures and other curriculum materials and we are hopeful that the site will become a well used outdoor learning environment, not just for Marden Senior College but for other local primary and secondary schools as well.
Utilizing this resource may directly assist teachers to meet the requirements of the Australian Curriculum, for example:

Intercultural understanding: “ respecting different views and customs ”

It is also consistent with Marden Senior College’s values:

• respectful relationships
• diversity

The idea to focus on planting indigenous food and medicine plants came about because of the strong personal interest of several of our current Stage 2 Earth and Environmental Science students who wanted to learn more about Aboriginal culture and traditional caring for the environment.  These students have chosen to focus on Aboriginal heritage in their individual elective studies.

Over the past decade students of Marden Senior College have planted thousands of local native trees, shrubs and ground cover plants at ‘Our Patch’, a one-acre site on the banks of the River Torrens nearby the College.  The aim has been to restore the site to how it might have been 200 years ago.   This new activity will plant and develop a further portion of ‘Our Patch’ adjacent to the previous plantings, but which will highlight Aboriginal food and medicine plants and the importance of the river environment for the seasonal food gathering activities of the Kaurna people.  We plan for this to become a valuable outdoor teaching and learning resource for all local schools, featuring interpretive signs and prepared teacher information and student workbooks.

Some of the signs to be designed for the site will feature the Kaurna language with English sub-titles. These will be developed in consultation with linguist Dr Rob Amery and subject to the approval of the Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi committee.