Our Stewardship of Endangered Endemic Species’ program (or SEEDS program for short) is teaching students to grow threatened native plants in schools across metro SA. Here’s what you should know about it and how to get your school involved.
The program centres on us at Green Adelaide matching schools with one or more threatened plant species (depending on their location) and then supporting the teachers and students to establish a small ‘seed orchard’ on their school grounds. A seed orchard is a term for a collection of plants that are grown to produce easy access, high-quality seeds.
This is all to increase populations of threatened native plant species in the wild.
How does the SEEDS program run?
Schools grow, collect and donate seeds to the SA Seed Conservation Centre at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.
They then go on to propagate plants for revegetation projects across the state, which helps to bolster or establish new populations of these species in the wild.
Each school is provided a direct contact person at Green Adelaide to help them along the whole process. We help schools by:
- Sourcing and providing them with endangered seeds.
- Guiding on the best condition and ways to grow/propagate them.
- Connecting teachers with other teachers who have embedded the program into the curriculum.
- Connecting schools with experts to problem solve and share practice.
- Small funding to help set up the program at your school.
What’s so special about the SEEDS program?
There are 3 reasons why this program is so special:
- Students take an active and leading role in protecting South Australia’s environment.
- Schools can incorporate the project into the curriculum, and it can be completely tailored towards the needs of the school.
- There are around 800 species of native plants, with about a quarter of them in South Australia at risk of becoming regionally extinct – so students in the program are making an on-ground difference for native plants and the wider healthy environment.
How long has SEEDS been going for?
The program has been running since 2014 led by the Seed Conservation Centre of South Australia and we, at Green Adelaide, partnered up at the end of 2023 to support this wonderful program.
Wilderness School in the inner northeastern suburbs of Adelaide has really taken the SEEDS program and grown with it!
They have recently created a book about their work caring for the critically endangered Spyridium frontis-woodii on a property the school has in the Coorong region. It details how the SEEDS program has helped them to cultivate seeds and grow plants to bring this species back from the brink of extinction.
Wanna find out more and get your school involved?
For more information on SEEDS please contact green Adelaide through our Contact Us page.