Airds, NSW

The Oorunga Wandarrah MACS centre requested 3 Wicking beds. Run by the Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation, Oorunga Wandarrah is a long day care centre in Airds caring for children from six weeks through to school age, with cultural learning and Dharawal language woven into its everyday program. The centre sets out to give children a warm, natural, hands-on place to learn, so three self-watering veggie beds they can plant, water and harvest themselves sit naturally alongside how they already teach. It's exactly the kind of setting these beds are made for — little hands, busy educators, and a garden that needs to keep growing whether or not anyone gets to it over a long weekend or the school holidays.

Like all our beds, these three raised garden beds are built from kiln-dried, vegetable-grade timber with our food-safe iron-oxide finish — no cheap CCA pine near where children grow their food — fully lined over a sealed wicking reservoir and filled with our custom-blended organic growing medium, so they crop well from the very first planting. The reservoir is what makes them self-watering: each bed holds water in its base and the plants draw it up from below, keeping the soil evenly moist so the garden grows steadily through weekends, holidays and hot spells with very little staff time. There's no digging, no daily hand-watering and no bought-in soil to cart around.

We sized the beds to suit an early learning environment. At a comfortable, child-friendly height and a narrower growing width, they're easy for small children to reach into and tend safely from either side. Set into the middle of each bed is a round worm composter, so the children can feed in their fruit and vegetable scraps and watch them turn back into food for the garden — a simple, hands-on way to learn where food comes from and how to care for living things. Planting, watering, composting and picking all happen in the one spot, which is just right for little gardeners who are only starting out.

Airds sits in the Macarthur region of south-west Sydney, where hot, dry summers, water restrictions and heavy clay soils can make growing vegetables in the ground hard work. A raised wicking bed sidesteps all of that, lifting the veggies into a clean, custom growing mix with a steady water supply from the reservoir below — so the garden stays green and productive right through the Campbelltown summer without anyone needing to water it every day. It's a reliable way to keep a food garden going in a climate that can be tough on a traditional veggie patch.

Built from durable, food-safe timber, these self-watering garden beds are made to last through years of busy, hands-on use. UrbanVeg builds raised garden beds, vegetable garden beds and wicking beds for childcare centres, preschools and schools across Airds, Campbelltown and the wider Macarthur region of south-west Sydney. If your centre or school would love a low-maintenance veggie garden the children can grow themselves, we'd love to help you plan it.