On going fundraising for Your Garden: Children's Therapy Garden

Jess and I have many years experience between us working with children with specific needs. We know that not all children fit the expect mould of the “normal” classroom and we are passionate about changing this.

We are Your Garden: The Children's Therapy Garden. Our site is based at The Historic Village Tauranga, working with primary school children with specific needs. These needs can include ASD, ADHD, PTSD and children with high anxiety to name just a few. The target students we are aiming to use the programme with will generally not be receiving any funding for learning assistance at school therefore resulting in them not achieving in the classroom or even being ready to learn in the structured environment and basically flying under the radar. By taking the children to a new learning environment such as Your Garden and allowing them to lead their own learning with the use of garden therapy, including sensory discovery and development of executive functioning (the ability for them to be ready to learn) they can then take these skills and use them back into the classroom and home. Your Garden is a specifically designed environment for students who are finding it hard to follow the "normal" classroom routines.

As part of this programme we are also giving back into the community. A considerable amount of the produce harvested will go back into the community as we are donating this produce to Good Neighbour (a local Community Group) to distribute where needed. This is a very important part of our programme as it is teaching the children about success, empathy, being an active member of the community and the good feeling of knowing your hard work is going to people who need it more than themselves.

We have been established for 18 months and continue to run with the generous help from the community and funding applications, but like many, this has been affected by Covid 19.

After successfully running the garden for the last 2 terms of 2020 we are ready to start a full year in 2021 with 2 primary schools on board and other students ready to attend. For us to run this effectively for them we need to continue to raise funds for our everyday running costs of the site. We are looking to cover costs of our insurances, students plants and seedlings, equipment and maintenance.