Our school received a grant from the Environment Trust to build an Indigenous garden.
Macquarie Fields Public School's project aims at creating an interactive and productive Indigenous garden. The focus of this garden is to connect Indigenous students with the land by allowing them to research, design and build a garden that represents their culture and supports the local ecosystem. With assistance from local elders, students will create murals and totems to represent their culture. These murals and totems will be placed in and around the Indigenous garden. This Indigenous garden will be a valuable learning space for our Indigenous students, as they will gain a deeper understanding of their heritage and culture whilst creating habitats for native wildlife.
Below are some photos of students building, designing and creating the Indigenous garden.
Below is a list of plants that we planted and their uses:
Plant list for School Aboriginal Gardens in the Sydney region
Coastal Wattle – Acacia longifolia – green seeds could be eaten raw, dry seeds were ground into flour to make a type of bread and the gum could be eaten when fresh and also used as an adhesive.
Spiny Headed Mat-rush - Lomandra longifolia - This was used for baskets, mats and eel-traps. The seeds were ground into a flour to make cakes. The tender leaf bases were eaten and have a pea-like flavour.
Geebung - Persoonia pinifolia -The fruits of Persoonia species have a hard stone covered with a soft layer. Both this and the seed inside the stone were eaten.
Lilly Pilly – Many different species - The fruits were eaten – jelly/cordial/jam.
Paperbark - Melaleuca sp. - The papery bark was used to wrap babies, as a fishing float, for bandages and to wrap food for cooking. The leaves were medicinal, the wood was used for spears and digging sticks.
Pig-face - Carpobrotus species - The fruit is red when ripe, with tiny seeds, and the salty leaves were also eaten with meat. The sap was used as an eye-wash.
Banksia species - Banksia integrifolia, ericifolia, spinulosa - The flower cones of all species of Banksias were soaked in water to make sweet drinks from the nectar. Single flowers were used as fine paint brushes.
Black She-oak - Allocasuarina littoralis - The young cones were eaten, and used for medicine and magic. The bark was also medicinal, and the wood used for boomerangs, clubs and shields
Gymea Lily - Doryanthes excels – The stems were roasted. They also roasted the roots, which they made into a sort of cake to be eaten cold.
Bottle Brush & Grevillea - The flowers were soaked in water to make a sweet drink from the nectar.
Lemon Scented Myrtle - Backhousia citriodora - Lemon myrtle was traditionally used as a medicine for headaches. It can also be used in cooking with sweets or fish. Traditionally fish would have been wrapped into paperbark and lemon myrtle leaves and cooked on fire. It can be cut fine and added to damper
Native mint - Prostanthera rotundifolia, the Round-leaf Mint Bush. Traditionally it was used as a medicinal herb - headaches, colds.