Mudgee, NSW

Cudgegong Valley Public School in Mudgee engaged us following a grant award to install some accessible garden beds for their kids. This was our first installation in Mudgee, and we were delighted to bring our self-watering wicking beds to the Central West of NSW — a region where hot, dry summers and long stretches between rain make a water-wise garden especially valuable.

This school currently has 5 children who are in wheelchairs, so one of the beds was made with an additionally accessible design for wheelchair access. A wheelchair-accessible raised garden bed lets every student roll right up and reach into the growing space at a comfortable seated height, so no child has to watch from the sidelines. Pairing genuine accessibility with a sealed wicking reservoir is something we've become known for, and it means the garden stays inclusive and productive without anyone needing to water it by hand each day.

Like all our beds, these accessible garden beds are built from kiln-dried, vegetable-grade timber with our food-safe iron-oxide finish — no cheap CCA pine near where students grow their food — fully lined over a self-watering reservoir and filled with our custom-blended organic growing medium, so they crop well from the very first planting. The reservoir in the base stores water and lets the plants draw it up from below, which is exactly what a Mudgee garden needs: the beds keep growing right through the school holidays and the dry Central West heat, with very little staff time and no daily watering.

Once they have landscaped this area with some crushed gravel and mulch, it will be an extremely attractive and productive area of the school. For Cudgegong Valley Public School it means a low-maintenance outdoor classroom where every student can plant, tend and harvest across the year, learning where their food comes from as they go.

Mudgee and the wider Central West can be a challenging place to grow vegetables in the ground — hot, dry summers, water restrictions and heavy soils all work against the home gardener — which is exactly why a raised wicking bed makes so much sense out here, lifting the veg into its own clean mix and steady, self-topping water supply. This was our first project in Mudgee, but we travel across regional NSW for school and multi-bed installations, and we'd love it to be the first of many.

If your school, childcare centre or acreage in Mudgee or the Central West would like productive, water-saving raised garden beds, we'd be glad to help you design them.