2. Your project this term is to…
Design a sustainable food garden to
address
a school, community or family
need or opportunity.
Think
globally
act locally.
3. Design thinking process
Investigate needs and opportunities
Generate ideas and
find sustainable solutions
Develop your
success criteria
Produce solutions
(your garden design)
Evaluate your design
using your success
criteria
4. Investigating needs and
opportunities for my
sustainable food garden
design
Success Criteria: I will be successful when I have
• determined who I am designing my food garden for, i.e., my
community (school, wider community or family)
• investigated and evaluated the food produce needs and
opportunities of my community by conducting a survey
25/7/2022
5. Before you start designing your garden you will need to
answer these questions:
1. Who am I designing the fresh produce garden for?
2. What are the fresh produce needs of my community?
3. What opportunities can a
fresh produce garden provide
for my community? These may
include social, ethical and
sustainability factors?
6. Who am I designing the garden for?
Who is my community?
Write down your choice of community in your workbooks.
Design a sustainable food garden to
address
a school, community or family
need or opportunity.
7. • What are the fresh produce needs of your
community? What do people already use in their
kitchens?
• What might they use if they had the opportunity?
Who you are designing for will help
determine
what will you grow.
8. Who you are designing for will help determine
what other elements you will include in your
garden?
• For example:
-Social factors (brings people together, wellbeing, exercise)
-Ethical factors (education, food security, biodiversity, equitable access)
-Sustainability factors (think global, act local)
Images: https://foodrevolution.org/blog/community-gardens/
9. Investigate needs and opportunities
How can we find some answers to these questions?
Investigation
10. Interview people in your
community.
Questions Responses
What local produce to
you eat regularly?
What would make you
eat more local
produce?
Are there any food
produce/products you
would like to see
available in our local
area that are not
already?
11. Do some research about your community.
What are Australia’s 3 most popular vegetables?
Do Australian’s prefer to buy sustainably grown
produce?
12. What are Australia’s 3 most popular vegetables?
No. 1. No. 2. No. 3.
News
“Australian consumers embracing and
demanding sustainability at record
levels.” ADAM MCCLEERY June 6, 2022, 8:54 am
15. Conduct a survey to investigate what some of
the school needs and opportunities are for a
food garden.
What questions could we ask?
Fresh produce needs:
Fresh produce opportunities:
17. Fresh produce needs
1. Which vegetables do you cook with most often during the week?
Tick 3 from the list below:
Vegetables Your answer (tick) Class results (number)
1. Carrot
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
18. Fresh produce opportunities
2. Which of the following produce would you use if you had the
opportunity? Tick any from the list below
Opportunities Your answer (tick) Class results (number)
1. Indigenous bush foods
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
19. Sustainability
3. How important is it to you that your produce is grown sustainably? For
example, composting, reducing packaging, using less pesticides, using
less water, maintaining soil health?
Your answer (tick) Class results
1. Very important
2. Somewhat important
3. Neutral (neither important or not important)
4. Not important
5. I don’t know what sustainability is
20. Create your own survey question
4. How important is it to you that…
Your answer (tick) Class results
1. Very important
2. Somewhat important
3. Neutral (neither important or not important)
4. Not important
5. I don’t know…
Link to previous lesson: Can anyone remember some of the benefits of having a sustainable food garden? – less packaging, less food miles, less waste, better nutrition – collectively we can have an impact upon global waste reduction, global greenhouse emissions reduction, global food security issues
Link to previous lesson: design thinking – problem solving – coming up with ideas and solutions to given problems
Step one is to investigate needs and opportunities of the person or group you are designing for.
Students write the underlined portions in their books.
Firstly decide who you will be designing the food garden for, as this will influence what you will grow and what other elements you include in your garden.
School – who in the school – Hospitality Department, Tuckshop, Inclusive for all students to use
Community – design a garden for the primary school to help educate children, design a garden for the elderly in aged care,
Family – provide a source of fresh produce for your family
Relate to real world - Use my own garden as an example: I grow lots of different herbs and leafy greens, cucumbers and tomatoes. This is because a) I don’t want to pay $3 a bunch from the supermarket, b) I don’t want lots of packaging, c) they are reasonably easy to grow, and I know if I can’t eat all of the cucumbers I can pickle them and my tomatoes I can cook up and freeze. Does anyone else grow some things in a garden already and why do you grow those things or have an idea of the things they definitely wouldn’t grow and why?
Link to why are gardens important lesson. These factors will be covered in greater detail in another lesson. An example would be if I was designing a community garden an ethical factor to consider would be making it accessible to all so I would need to put in wide paths and raised garden beds. OR in my own garden I grow some flowers, mainly because they make me happy but also because they can attract bees, marigolds can deter pests and sunflowers can be used in crop rotation e.g. sunflowers and sugar cane – cycle though different nutrients and provide mulch for the soil. “Diversity is important when it comes to soil health and sunflowers bring in another element.” https://wtsip.org.au/uncategorized/sunflower-fallow/
Encourage students to come up with ideas first. Prompt with “If you were trying to find something out what would you do?
Research, Observation, Interview people in your community, Survey
Conduct a quick poll. What do you think are Australia’s most popular vegetables?
Hand out survey worksheets
We need to find out what our class needs – what vegetables/fruit/herbs do you already use (need)?
What vegetables/fruit/herbs would you use if they were readily available (opportunity)? – would you use indigenous bush foods, would you use fresh herbs?
How else would you use the garden? – relaxing, socialising, education?
How important are sustainability factors like – composting, reducing packaging, using less pesticides, using less water, maintaining soil health?
Conduct survey – hands or thumbs up
Collate data – volunteer to count and record the numbers
Visually represent the data – draw a graph – choose one of the questions
Class discussion and contribution to list of vegetables – avocado, tomato, cucumber, spinach, zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, onions, cabbage, pumpkin. Students tick 3 choices.
Class discussion and contribution. Fresh herbs, Indigenous bush foods, edible flowers, chickens for eggs (manure), bee hives for honey (pollination), Asian ingredients (pak choy, choy sum, kaffir lime, lemongrass), e.g., kaffir lime tree. Pass around lemon myrtle and kaffir lime. As before.
