Dryden Street Primary School unveiled its new indigenous garden last week.

The garden was made possible by non-profits Neighbourhood Gardens, Gugulethu Urban Food Forest Initiative (Guffi) and Community Women Action as well as a German work-exchange programme.

Neighbourhood Gardens representative Ismail Johnson said the garden allowed the school’s children to interact with nature.

Guffi representative Zukisa Mayeza added: “We want to build more greenery in the townships and suburbs in the most vulnerable communities.”

German urban planner Laura Meinert, from the work-exchange programme, said she had helped to coordinate with the three non-profits and she and her compatriots, Nora Unruit and Franziska Fellmann, had also helped with some of the planting.

Ms Unruit, who has a Bachelors degree in political science, said: “We want to enhance food security and biodiversity, and small gardens in the community can enhance the areas as well as education on how to create small gardens.”

Ms Fellmann, who brought her nutritional science expertise to the project, said: “It was an exchange of information. I learnt a lot about the gardening process from the organisations and I gave my input of working with nutrition and with children.”

Mr Johnson said the garden had 15 different flower species as well as rosemary, wild figs and wild dagga. It also had benches for the children to sit on.

Principal Stanton Smith. “Our pupils have really taken ownership of the garden as Salt River is mostly a concrete environment , not many of our children are exposed to gardens, so they are showing a lot of excitement in working on this garden.”

In the new garden, from left, are Ismail Johnson, from Neighbourhood Gardens; Zukisa Mayeza, from Gugulethu Urban Food Forest Initiative; and German work exchange representatives Franziska Fellmann, Laura Meinert and Nora Unruit.

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New indigenous garden at Dryden Street Primary