About the garden
The Native Plant Garden, established in 2025, is an alternative teaching space located on Level 4 of the Kwong Lee Dow building at the Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne. Grounded in sustainability principles, the Native Plant Garden is used in ways aimed to bolster plant awareness (Pany et al., 2022) across early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education to foster knowledge and understanding of the environmental and social importance of plants. As such, the Garden is a beloved living classroom essential for offering innovative teaching and learning experiences and professional learning for educators and the wider community.
Learning and engagement experiences for students and educators
Connecting educators with school communities reconstituting their local areas with native plants in ways that meaningfully engage with community
Collaborating with a professional network of local education providers to learn about plants and understand the support systems available to educators teaching for a sustainable world
Using the garden space to showcase Indigenous knowledges and explore Aboriginal ways of learning in culturally safe ways
Exploring and designing integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education experiences connected to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Trialling and evaluating original resources, informed by education research, across learning areas and critically reflecting on biopiracy and Indigenous and Cultural and Intellectual Property rights
Demonstrating how plants and gardening can be utilised to promote health and wellbeing
The University of Melbourne Acknowledgement of Country can be accessed on the University website. In the spirit of reconciliation, we have crafted an acknowledgement that reflects our journey, as non-Indigenous people, toward opening our hearts and minds to Indigenous knowledges and perspectives as we work and live on this unceded land.
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the traditional owners and stewards of these unceded lands on which the Faculty of Education resides, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples. We pay our respects to the traditional owners, past and present, and any Indigenous visitors to the website and Native Plant Garden. We wish to emphasise the place of Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in not only the Academy, but also in our teaching wherever that may be, remembering that we are always on Country.
Emily Rochette and Steven Constantinos
The establishment of the Native Plant Garden was made possible with funds awarded by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Innovation Sub-Committee, the International Community for Classroom Research and the Barbara Falk Award for Teaching Excellence.
Pany, P., Meier, F. D., Dünser, B., Yanagida, T., Kiehn, M., & Möller, A. (2022). Measuring students’ plant awareness: A prerequisite for effective botany education. Journal of Biological Education, 58(5), 1103-1116