Poem Forest
Poem Forest is a free nature poetry prize created by Red Room Poetry in collaboration with the Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan NSW. The purpose of this competition is to plant a native tree in the garden and restore the critically endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland in Western Sydney. Poem Forest aims to plant over 22000 trees over three years by planting three grand tree species: Forest Red gum, Grey box and Narrow-leaved Ironbark.
https://www.australianbotanicgarden.com.au/Learn/Poem-Forest
The following poem penned by Chinmayi Jonnalagadda, a Year 10 student from Brentwood has been selected and featured by Red Room Poetry as a part of the Poem Forest competition. Congratulations, Chinmayi.
https://redroompoetry.org/student-poems/twas-but-the-last-spring-day/
Term Tree
This year’s World Environment Day’s theme is ‘Ecosystem Restoration’. Brentwood has joined the Generation Restoration and pledged to plant 2700 trees in Term 3 along the Scotchmans Creek and in the Mornington Peninsula. We are partnering up with the Friends of Scotchmans Creek and 15 Trees to execute this plan. The following poster created by Anais (Year 7) was posted to our house teams.
VSGA Awards 2019:
Turf Victoria Award
Brentwood Secondary College won the Turf Victoria Award at this year’s Victorian Schools Garden Awards held on 21st November at the Royal Botanic Gardens. The prize included 300 square metres of Kikuyu turf from Advance Turf, worth $4,500. The Green Team had the opportunity to meet Costa Georgiadis, the gardening guru, at the awards ceremony.
Biodiversity Audit 2019
On Tuesday the 18th of June, the Green Team participated in the Habitat Quality Assessment of Brentwood as a part of the Biodiversity Module of the ResourceSmart Schools program. The audit of the college grounds included identification and recording of indigenous plants, animal habitat quality, linkages of school vegetation and habitats with surrounding areas.
The Habitat Quality Assessment score for this audit was calculated as 68 out of 100. The previous score calculated in 2016 was 51. This significant increase in the biodiversity assessment score is the result of the planting and caring of natives done by our college gardener, Mr. Collin King. The Green Team has planted several native trees in the past few years at the Brentwood Tree Day. The team will continue to work on the school’s biodiversity throughout this year to hopefully achieve the fourth star of the Resource Smart Schools certification, by the end of this year.
Brentwood Tree Day
2019:
On 26th July 2019, the Brentwood Green Team invited several members from the community to participate in Brentwood’s annual Tree day event. With the help of everyone involved, we planted over 65 native plants in various locations at the college.
The recent Biodiversity audit carried our as a part of the ResourceSmart Schools program indicated that Brentwood’s Habitat Quality score has improved from 51 in 2016 to 68 (/100) this year. Tree day events conducted for the past four years have also helped in improving this score.
2018:
On 27th July 2018, The Brentwood Green Team participated in Schools Tree Day. Parents, community members, students and teachers from Brentwood and Glen South Primary School attended the event. Collectively, we planted over 60 natives on the college grounds. The Green Team had the opportunity to share their actions and achievements with the community members. It was also a great opportunity to network and share ideas with the Enviro club members of GWSPS
2017:
On 19th June 2017, the Green Team planted over fifty native plants behind the portables on the eastern side of the college as a part of the Schools Tree Day. Our school gardener, Mr Collin King taught us how to plant them and helped us with tools and other materials required. We thank the Monash council for providing us with the voucher to obtain free native plants from a local nursery.
2015:
On 24th July 2015, the Green team and a group of students and staff participated in this year's National Schools Tree day. We received 20 shrubs and native trees from the council. All the students and staff at the event planted the native shrubs in the school grounds. It was interesting to see a lot of new faces from the college taking an active participation in one of the green team's initiative.
VSGA Regional Award
2018:
Brentwood bagged the regional award at this year's Victorian Schools Garden Awards. The award included a certificate as well as a $300 voucher to redeem at a local nursery. The awards ceremony was held at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.
2016:
The Green Space has won this year's Regional award provided by Victorian Schools Garden Awards. We were invited to the presentation ceremony at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne held on 29 November.