Over 20 Whanganui schools get supplies to go green with 2023 School Vege Challenge

Students of Mosston School getting their supplies for the School Vege Challenge.

The third year of Springvale Garden Centre’s School Vege Challenge has kicked off, with more Whanganui schools taking part than ever before.

The contest is open to all primary, intermediate and secondary schools within a 20-kilometre radius of Whanganui.

Schools entered in the challenge had supplies to construct and grow their own garden delivered to them by the centre at the start of the school year.

Springvale Garden Centre general manager Gareth Carter said 22 schools entered this year’s challenge.

Of those 22, he said half were returning from previous years while the other half were taking part for the first time.

Carter said the goal was to get kids into gardening early in life.

“That’s just more kids that are getting involved that are doing gardening early and getting their hands dirty,” he said.

The garden centre delivered supplies over three days at the start of the school year, supplying seeds, seedling punnets, vegetable mix and the building materials for the gardens.

With the larger number of entries came a larger amount of supplies to deliver, with Zelandia Horticulture giving eight punnets of seedlings to each school, and 132 bags of Tui vegetable mix being delivered.

“Logistically it actually was quite a big thing, we couldn’t fit it all in the van,” Carter said.

After the contest started, another company reached out to the centre, he said, saying they wanted to supply cloches that would protect seedlings from cats or rabbits while they were germinating.

“Another supplier said, ‘Oh, that’s such a good idea, we’d like to get on board’,” he said.

Two cloches will be given to each school at the mid-point check-in for the challenge.

Carter said some schools had big plans this year, as returning schools looked to expand their gardens.

“Once you’ve got someone involved in it, they’ll start looking beyond the area, so they’ll be like, ‘Oh, what can we do with this area, we could be growing more vegetables along here’,” he said.

He was looking forward to the mid-point check-in of the challenge, as then he and the garden centre team will be able to see what the schools have managed to achieve.

The check-in will happen in late April, and the final judging will begin in June.

Entries to the competition will be judged on six categories - carrot-growing, broccoli-growing, innovation and theatre, best-looking garden, seed-sowing and the People’s Choice award.

The winners of each category will win $80 of garden products, with runners-up winning $50 worth of products.

The overall winner of the challenge will be the school with the most points across all six categories.

The challenge is sponsored by Yates NZ, Zelandia Horticulture, Eastown Timber, Tui Garden Products, Egmost Commercial and Ican.

Carter hoped once the contest was over, many of the schools would continue to tend to the garden until the challenge rolls around again next year.