"Let's build food forests in all the schools!" M, age 14.
This is what the OG Natural Leaders have decided is their moonshot goal. It will be a decades-long project, but one they are keen to kick off. They call it the Food Forest Joy Project. A food forest in every school in the Lower North Island. They hope that one day their kids can eat from trees that they planted when they were kids.
Several of our Natural Leaders students have had personal experience with food insecurity, and they want to make sure that no other students have to experience the same. Many of the students identify as neurodiverse and know how important nature is for their nervous systems. They want more natural spaces and practical natural learning laboratories instead of primarily book and screen learning spaces in schools.
What it costs the school
$0.00 for the site assessment, trees, planting, facilitation, and school training in regenerative agriculture.
About 1 hour a month in maintenance in the first year and less after the garden is established; however, if you have a Garden to Table coordinator, this gets folded into class time.
What we bring
$4,000.00 worth of trees, plants, and soil amendments. Approximately 20 fruit trees and their guilds (the plants that add beauty, help them grow, nourish the soil, and attract bees), the design, the build itself, the compost and chip sourcing, the outdoor classroom. The build out takes about a year from conception, to soil development, through to a multistaged planting and harvest time. Through all of this, our intent is to train the school to take over as kaitiaki trained in regenerative care of the forest. We offer support for a year after it is establised. All facilitators are police-vetted, and the child protection policy is reviewed under the Children's Act 2014.
What we ask
The school planning team - Principal, School champion, grounds person, and board's commitment to the project. Spray-free on that patch and vicinity around it. Plan agreed before digging starts. Student-led by Natural Leaders students; adults facilitate their success.
Our pilot project won us the Rising Star Award in Upper Hutt at the Wellington Community Awards.
Register your school's expression of interest
Once you submit, Mandi Lynn, the project lead, will get in touch with your school within a fortnight. The first step is a site visit. It takes an hour and commits you to nothing. From there we build a plan with your team, and once everyone is happy with it we sign an MOU. That's what holds your place.
Trees go in at the start of term 3. For 2027 we have room for three food forests, one each in the Hutt, Wellington and Porirua. Applications close 15 December 2026.
Between signing of the MOU and planting
We teach regenerative land care at your school.
We build the plan with your team until everyone is happy with it.
We get your community alongside.
Your students nurture the soil ready for the trees.
Our students fundraise for the build.
Explainer deck for your principal and the board.
Pilot: Maidstone Intermediate, 2025
We planted our first food forest at Maidstone in 2025. It's thriving. It also came in smaller than we planned, because we started before the whole school team was behind it. That's why we now ask for the principal, the champion teacher, the grounds staff and the board before anything goes in the ground.
Newtown Primary, 2026
A teacher at Newtown had come through our Nature and Neuroscience training. We asked whether her school would be keen, and she took it to her principal.
We built it with the school's Garden to Table programme rather than alongside it, so the same students who planted the trees are the ones tending them. Kaicycle supplied compost, a local arborist gave us woodchips, the community donated tubers for the flower garden, and Gateway students from Taita College dug the trenches and tree holes. We planted trenches of Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes to feed people while the fruit trees mature. When the flowers come out this summer, the students will be taking them to the local retirement village.
We finished our agreed planting and handed the forest over to the school to manage. We'll be back in a year to see how it's growing and whether more trees or support are wanted.