Year 4 students in Broulee planted about 1,000 native plants for a school microforest
St Peter's Anglican College spent a week turning a bare patch of playground into the start of a coastal rainforest, the first New South Wales school to build a microforest into the curriculum with Microforest Collective.
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Year 4 students at St Peter's Anglican College in Broulee spent a week putting about 1,000 native plants into a bare piece of playground. ABC News reported on October 25, 2026, that the planting is the start of a microforest meant to add shade and bring back plants from the region's endangered coastal littoral rainforest.
It is the first school in New South Wales to research, design, and plant a microforest with the nonprofit Microforest Collective as part of the curriculum. Teacher Danielle Phillips said the class visited local rainforests, named species, and worked out what each plant needs before anyone picked up a spade. They mapped the site with science, maths, geography, and literacy, including a volume problem for how much mulch the ground would take. Phillips said the outdoor work is also practice in how a group talks to one another when a task gets difficult.
Student Zale Neal told ABC the class was trying to bring back plants and animals lost in the 2020 bushfires, and that planting felt calming because the forest would still be there when they are older. The school expects the microforest to be a model other schools can follow.
For the classroom
ABC News reported on October 25, 2026, that year 4 students at St Peter's Anglican College in Broulee, Australia, spent a week planting about 1,000 native plants. The bare patch of playground is meant to become a small forest that gives shade and a home to local plants and animals. The plants belong to a rare kind of coastal rainforest. Students visited real rainforests first, learned which plants need which conditions, and used maths to plan the mulch. Their teacher said the work is also about learning to help one another when a job gets hard. The school hopes other schools will try the same idea.
- Why would a school plant a forest in the playground instead of only reading about one?
- What school subject, besides science, did these students use while they planned the planting?
- What is one native plant or animal near your school that could use more shade or cover?
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