Growing Sustainable STEMs

Gardens in the city offer solutions to the real-world problems of biodiversity loss, pollution, fresh food supplies, warming environments, well-being and much more.

Through a Design Thinking approach, students will develop an understanding of the challenges of keeping our cities green, explore a variety of vertical garden designs and work collaboratively to construct a sustainable school garden for a small space.

• Learn about the amazing benefits of gardens to our cities and undertake the design process addressing the challenge of sustainable garden design for your school considering site opportunities, limitations and local environmental issues.
• Examine and build sustainable urban garden designs in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, learning about the design features and the plants that flourish here.
• Create a garden design concept for your school and an eye-catching poster to pitch your design to your school principal.

• Examine vertical garden designs in the gardens and the adaptations of the plants that flourish in them
• Plan and use materials, tools and equipment.
• Develop a solution for increasing gardens and fresh food supplies in cities, where space is limited.
• Explore the environment needed for plants to survive and thrive when designing a small space garden.
• Discover suitable upcycled materials that can be reused to make a vertical garden.

Focused Syllabus Outcomes

Science

• Plan and use materials, tools and equipment to develop solutions for a need or opportunity (ST3-2DP-T)
• Examine how the environment affects the growth, survival and adaptation of living things (ST3-4LW-S)

Supported Syllabus Outcomes

Science

• Explain how food and fibre are produced sustainably in managed environments for health and nutrition (ST3-5LW-T)
• Select and apply appropriate problem-solving strategies, including the use of digital technologies, in undertaking investigations (MA3-2WM)