Sustainability A Winner For Steiner School HOTY

When 1993 bushfires charred the Orana Steiner School on Canberra’s western flank they lit the spark for a teacher to become Australia’s Horticulturalist of the Year.

IEU Member Tim Edmondson reached back to a former life as a horticulturalist, contracting to the capital’s embassies and high commissions, to coordinate regeneration of the 13-hectare site.

He made it a collaborative effort with students, parents and local professionals. The creativity of one of the latter, Paul Totterdell, was central to what has been achieved.

Totterdell’s inventive water purification procedure appealed to Tim from the start.

Drawing on an understanding of the Australian environment and its unique methods of water harvesting, it holds the school’s runoff underground in sand-filled trenches, effectively beating evaporation.

Tim suspects it is the future for inland Australia because the embedded energy is “highly effective and can sustain large numbers of people”.

He calls it a combination of “good science and a bit of Dreamtime understanding”.

“When we started we were pretty clear, we didn’t just want to stick plants in the ground. We wanted it all to be sustainable,” Tim said.

Judges at the Australian Horticulturist of the Year Award, a flash ceremony hosted by celebrity gardener Don Burke in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, were impressed.

National president of the Australian Horticulturalists Association Kim Morris described Tim, and the project, as “unique Australian identities”.

At Orana, trees planted by students in 2005 have reached sizes normally expected after 20 years of growth.

The regenerated area provides classic carbon lock-up benefits including cooling, shade and a home for hundreds of bird and insect species.

“It’s a little oasis and you can really feel it when you are in there,” Tim says. “It is an invitation to contemplate and relax.”

IEU member Tim says it is just the first step in a restoration process that will take at least another decade. It is all laid out in the Learnscape Masterplan which took two years of consultation and planning to develop.

He credits the Steiner philosophy for much of his success. Often characterised as freethinking, it encourages adherents to develop their non-material attributes.

Steiner families donate at least 30 hours a year to the “community”.  Soon after Tim’s children started at the Canberra school, he found himself on committees, working bees and, before long, on staff in a system that incorporates horticulture, then agriculture, into the core curriculum.

When it came to redeveloping the school grounds he had a roster of 80 “community members”, including bobcat drivers, landscapers, trades people and architects to call on.

He said sitting down to write his award submission had helped his own recovery from fires that claimed lives and homes in his neighbourhood.

“Getting over something like that isn’t easy. You can go on adrenaline for a few weeks but, after a while, you should realise it isn’t a crisis any longer, it is time to stop reacting and start planning.

“I don’t think I had come to that and the writing helped me to look beyond the ground at my feet and appreciate my family, friends and colleagues at the local Institute of Horticulture.”

Very deep. But Australia’s reigning Horticulturalist of the Year just can’t resist referring to himself as a HOTY.

More information is available from at www.thinkwater.act.gov.au/water_stories/orana_school.shtml

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