Children in year two at Gladstone Primary in Auckland can’t wait for the weekends to be over this spring – they want to get back to school to check on the progress of their Little Garden seedlings from New World.
Their teacher Riha Ali says the first thing the children do on a Monday morning is rush into the classroom to see whether their seedlings need water, check how high they’ve grown and to monitor the class experiment – where one Little Garden is set by a large window and another is in a dark corner.
This is the fourth time New World has brought Little Garden to their customers and local communities. As well as being a much-loved collectable for customers, it’s again providing a fun and engaging way for stores to get involved and give back to their local communities, helping inspire a new generation to learn more about where their food comes from and understand what’s involved in growing fresh produce.
"They’re learning so much from New World Little Garden," says Ali. "The children always have lots of questions about how things grow and where food comes from, but it’s also teaching them about responsibility and taking care of something else."
The pupils at Gladstone Primary are just a few of the more than 125,000 Kiwi kids aged between five and eight receiving free Little Garden kits to see how easy it is to grow plants from a tiny seed into something they can enjoy eating.
Each seedling kit contains a fibre pottle, a soil tablet, a seed mat studded with one of 24 different types of vegetable, herb or flower seeds, and a character sticker. Learning resources for schools include games and display materials that teachers can integrate into a variety of curriculum areas.
Ali says Little Garden is big on the fun factor, and that makes a huge difference for young students, who thrive from the hands-on approach to learning.
"I think we need to make learning fun. I want to make everything I teach interesting," she says.
Research shows that children are more likely to try vegetables if they have helped to grow, prepare or cook them themselves, when they are added to their favourite meals, and when they see their peers eating them. So, Gladstone Primary pupils are not only taking home their own seedling at the end of the project, but also a recipe card to help them make something delicious from their plant to share with their families.
"I’ve been to New World and collected all the Little Garden recipe cards, so the child who is taking home Remi Radish won’t just know how to grow it, but will actually have a recipe to know how to use it," says Ali.
School kids aren’t the only ones learning and having fun with Little Garden. The team at New World New Lynn – one of more than 140 locally-owned and operated stores around New Zealand – are digging in too, with teams looking after their own bean seedlings and vying for prizes in categories including first to sprout, tallest plant, biggest bean and best name.
New World New Lynn’s owner operator David Cullen says his team are really passionate about their work and are really getting behind how Little Garden can encourage people to eat what’s in season, so they get better value for money and a more varied, and therefore healthier, diet.
"We know people want to eat healthy and fresh," he says. "Little Garden makes it easy and fun to get more veges into your family meals. The characters help families find value by understanding seasonality, and get kids interested in eating veges."
Every New World store across the country has a Vegepod to donate and Cullen says New World New Lynn is donating their large Vegepod as well as a $150 Mitre10 voucher to nearby Arahoe Primary School, so they can grow their own vegetables. Each New World around the country is making a similar contribution.
"The Little Garden campaign is a fun and engaging way to educate our littlest shoppers about eating healthy vegetables and herbs," he says. "We also have a donation bin near our checkouts where customers can donate seedling kits to local schools, and if there are any seedling kits left over at the end, we’ll donate them to schools too."
Head in to your locally-owned New World store to get your free Little Garden Seedling Kit and visit newworld.co.nz/littlegarden for
Little Garden recipe inspiration.
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