NYU students with teacher Jane Elkington
On a sunny Monday afternoon in November, a group of students from New York University dropped in to visit our community garden for an hour. They’re here in Sydney for a semester, studying environment and society, and were keen to find out about our approach to veggie gardening, and the social context of the work we do. Robert McDougall was there to share his PhD research findings with them, and I held forth with the story of who we are, and the historical context of the Mort Bay area.
We toured the compost station, and one student found something there:
“Is that a slug?’ she asked in her best Big Apple accent.
“Well found!” I replied, and squashed it under my heel.
They were rather horrified at this display of nature raw in tooth and claw. However they cheered up when I forced them to eat freshly-picked lettuce, borage and nasturtium flowers, and even shared a precious strawberry.
Then they waved goodbye as they set off to do their walkability checklist of Short St. Oh, to be young and academic! It was a pleasure to host them, and spread a little enthusiasm about sustainable gardening across the world.