Throughout the year, Dr Laux and a small group of very dedicated students kindly donated their time during lunch to help produce small gardening kits to be donated to 200 volunteers working at Tōtara Hospice, Manurewa. The project started at the end of 2022, when Annette Li was inspired by her work in the butterfly garden one day – Annette suggested students make presents that would bring joy and hope to the hardworking volunteers at the Hospice, while being respectful of the environment. Annette finally came up with the idea of donating sunflower seedlings for the volunteers to plant, that would then return joy and happiness to their lives as they watched it grow.
Annette is an active participant of the enviro team at Sancta Maria College and wanting to continue her respect for the environment, recycling and upcycling plastics, so the idea of planting the seeds in a upcycled yoghurt pot was borne. As a result, Cameron Motion and Dr Laux set themselves up to eat and collect yoghurt pots throughout terms 1 – 3. Then, a few students painted the pots to make them colourful.
A special thank you to Grace Chen, who also spent her lunchtime’s helping Dr Laux paint over 100 pots during the start of term 4, and Botany Bunnings who kindly donated peat discs and sunflower seeds. Each gardening kit contained a pair of gardening gloves, a gardening shovel and the seedling pot. Thank you again to the small group of students who came during their lunch and help make this project a reality – these seedlings will be gifted to the volunteers at Tōtara Hospice closer to Christmas.
