1. Hello, I am Ms Abbas. I teach Natural Sciences at Levana Primary and am involved in environmental projects at our school.

 

 

2.  Levana Primary is in Lavender Hill, where gangs are active. Our school is trying to create a safe and pleasant environment for the learners.

 

 

3. We keep our school very tidy and one of our ex-learners, Tarno September, has helped us to beautify the school with murals.

 

 

4.  In 2000, our school took part in a Water Conservation competition run by the City of Cape Town. We won a prize of water-wise indigenous plants from Kirstenbosch Gardens. At first I was worried that nothing would grow in our dry sandy soil, so I visited Kirstenbosch to ask for advice. I found out about water-wise gardening and learned that Strandveld, the natural vegetation from our area, grows easily in these conditions.

 

 

5. A local community group called the Zandvlei Trust helped us to get hold of a free load of dry pondweed, which the City regularly removes from Zandvlei. We dug this in to enrich the soil before planting. The boys in my Grade 7 class laid out the garden one Friday afternoon after school. It was their idea to use bricks to make footpaths. They also decided where to plant all the plants from Kirstenbosch.

 

 

6. Now, years later, we have a mature garden. We do many of our Natural Sciences lessons outdoors, which the learners enjoy.