By Sarah Tartakover & David Jones
Just over 50 years ago, The Farm was a vacant one-acre paddock opposite Footscray High School’s Kinnear Street campus. Originally a stone-cutting site that was part of a quarry, it is now a thriving education centre for horticulture and environmental studies at the school where students can study year 11 and 12 VCE VET Horticulture and receive a Certificate II in Horticulture.
Jak Dunstan, who teaches and coordinates the program, describes The Farm site as a living and evolving patchwork of plants and urban farming activities – “What you see here is the result of 50 years of students working at The Farm. Students keep the place running”.
The Farm offers a different style of education and caters to a diverse range of students’ needs and interests. Students are engaged in a range of activities including planting and harvesting vegetables and herbs, growing fruit trees in the orchard, raising chooks, maintaining the aquaponic and hydroponic areas, tending to the bee hives and looking after the wind farm. They regularly donate the fruit and vegetables that have been harvested at The Farm to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre Foodbank.
Because students at The Farm are generally working outdoors in nature they often thrive in this environment and as well as developing a range of food production skills, learn important life-long social and career skills such as teamwork and problem solving. They are also given different important roles and responsibilities and have a sense of autonomy over the work they do. Jak often encourages his students to connect with the wider school community by handing out vegetables and flowers they’ve just picked.
Woody Meadow Project
In May 2024 Jak’s Horticulture students helped plant the first Woody Meadow in the City of Maribyrnong at Cuming Reserve in Yarraville as part of a collaborative project between local residents, Maribyrnong City Council, the Green Guerrilla Group and University of Melbourne.
The Woody Meadow was planted with a variety of Australian native plants that have been chosen because of their drought tolerance and their beautiful and prolific flowers which provide pollen and nectar for birds and insects.
Jak recently brought his students along to help give the Woody Meadow a ‘green haircut’ by giving the plants an important and necessary prune. Woody Meadows are deliberately designed to be pruned regularly every few years to promote flowering and encourage sideways growth which helps shade the soil in the heat of summer and reduces the growth of weeds.
Jak notes that one of the great benefits of his students’ involvement in the Woody Meadow project is the opportunity it provides to learn about how horticultural knowledge and skills are used in important environmental projects.
“Kids in the city think of horticulture as lawn mowing and this project helps them to expand their thinking.’’
The project has been such a success that the new Woody Meadow guidelines produced by the team of academics at Melbourne University now include a suggestion for all future projects to consider collaborating with schools.
Students involved in the VCE VET Horticulture program at The Farm have found a wide range of different career and further education study paths. For example, one recent graduate from the program is now working as an apprentice arborist, and another graduate, who had a very high ATAR score, is pursuing a science degree at University of Melbourne majoring in plant science.
As well as the Woody Meadow project, students are involved in working on a range of projects with staff from the Maribyrnong City Council, including Martin the MCC ranger. They take pride in working on projects in their local community and seeing the practical results, with one student sharing; ‘I drive past here with my parents and say this is what I did.’
Jak also points out that some students don’t immediately start using the knowledge and skills they have gained once they finish the course.
‘A lot of students come back to it later in life. What we do is sow the seeds!’
