Nelson Park Enviro Group

The Group

The Nelson Park Enviro Group is an enthusiastic bunch of students from Years 2-6 who meet weekly to work together on Environmental issues.

At the beginning of each year teachers select 2 students from each class to join the group. They work with Mrs L. Arnold each Wednesday afternoon on a range of projects.

Our Goal

The main purpose of the group is to improve the school environment, by raising the students awareness of issues like litter, recycling and gardening. We also aim to create a greater awareness of the bigger issues, such as the need to look after our world and live in a sustainable way.

Our Projects

We undertake a variety of projects each year, but paper recycling is one of the main activities that all the school is involved in. We are developing a Butterfly Garden to provide a home for the Monarch Butterflies, making compost with the scraps collected after energiser break and we have a worm farm which produces a ready supply of Worm Wee, an awesome organic Fertiliser.

Future Projects

During 2008 we would love to get into composting to deal with the huge amounts of food scraps.

As the work of the Group develops classes will be able to take increased responsibility for some of the projects as part of their classroom learning programme.

Arbor Day at Nelson Park - (View Photos)

Thanks to a generous grant from the Dept of Conservation and a donation of plants from Palmers, Hastings, members of the Enviro Group were able to celebrate Arbor Day by beginning a native planting by the new adventure playground.

Students were involved in selecting the plants, preparing the area for planting them and the actual planting. The same group will be responsible for the continued maintenance for the area.

This will certainly improve the look of the Park entrance to the school.

Our next big project is to work alongside Trees 4 Hawkes Bay and develop a native area beside the pool.

Both these projects not only improve the look of the school but also provide valuable learning for our students, helping them to see how important trees are to us all.