Blackett Child Care Centre has overcome some issues to use the Yates Creative Gardening Grant to create an upcycling tyre garden. The centre researched the most sustainable garden for the centre’s needs and decided on a rainbow garden of succulents.

The Blackett Child Care Centre originally planned to create herb and flower gardens out of recycled pallets. The local council’s Sustainability Team had undertaken a similar project and found that pallet gardens dried out quickly due to the shallow soil. In order to combat this, the centre modified the project to upcycle tyres instead, and changed the flowers to succulents to reduce bees at the centre due to the risk of anaphylaxis.  The pallets that were already collected were used as climbing frames for passionfruit vines and as a frame for holding seedling containers.

The children were much engaged in making decisions for our garden. In the conception of the garden, they talked about what colour to use for the tyres and where to lay them out in our big yard. The children were very excited when the painted tyres were ready and were all raring to help position the seedlings in each tyre. They proudly showed their families the end product during pick up time, mostly admiring the bright happy colours it added to the centre’s outdoor space.

The project aimed to increase the awareness of the children, their families and the local community of sustainable gardening and upcycling and repurposing materials readily available in the environment. The project has had some great environmental and educational outcomes, teaching the children valuable lessons in caring for the plants while building relationships with the community and other children at the centre. The succulents were selected for their colour, texture and leaf shape encouraging thinking and language skills.

“Blackett Child Care Centre creates a rainbow tyre garden that brought about collaboration, unity and beauty to their centre’s community.”