Ryde, NSW

This was a joint project with Ryde Council, which funded a local public school to install three wicking beds to be used as teaching aids — part of the council's Edible Gardens in Schools program that we've been proud to support across the area.

The location was a nice piece of problem-solving. We made use of a sunny spot that had been fenced off from the playground and was otherwise just being used to store mulch. With the beds in place, that neglected corner is now put to genuine use, serving as a teaching aid in a range of environmental and science projects — a tidy example of turning dead space into a productive outdoor classroom.

The three raised beds are built from kiln-dried, vegetable-grade timber with our food-safe iron-oxide finish — no cheap CCA pine near where the students 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 first planting.

Self-watering raised beds are especially well suited to schools, and Ryde has been a particularly strong area for us through the council's Edible Gardens in Schools program. The reason they work so well comes down to the reservoir: each bed stores its water in the base and the plants draw it up from below, so the garden keeps growing right through the holidays. There are no dried-out beds waiting when term resumes — the students come back to a patch that's still alive and producing.

For a Ryde school, that means a productive, low-maintenance outdoor classroom where students can plant, tend and harvest across the year, learning the environmental and scientific principles behind it as they go. Because the beds largely look after their own watering, they need very little staff time to keep going.

The leafy North Shore, with its big trees, shade and clay soil, can be a hard place to grow vegetables in the ground — another reason a raised wicking bed makes such sense here, lifting the veg into its own clean mix and steady water supply.

Built from durable, food-safe timber, these raised garden beds are made to last through years of school use. If your school would like a productive teaching garden, we'd love to help you plan it.

More of our Ryde Council Edible Gardens installs and other school projects: www.urbanveg.com.au/wicking-beds-for-schools