Education programs - Geelong Botanic Gardens

• Introduce your students to the Botanic Gardens
• Explore the vegetable garden and discover where our favourite veggies grow
• Hug a tree and run your hands along the hedges
• Smell the roses ... and the mulch.

Gardens are not just for plants – without a healthy insect population we would not have healthy plants!

Students learn about the animals that share our Gardens through stories and hands-on exploration.

Explore the world of the mini-beasts under the mulch using our class set of magnifying glasses, and look wider to find our flying visitors.

The gardens offer a rich sensory experience and this program concentrates on the senses of smell and touch.

Children enjoy a story about noses, explore the garden to find smelly plants and make a “smell bag” to take home.

Students explore the Gardens and hear stories about trees, plant uses, food and the natural environment. Our educators use a range of resources to help students connect with plants and their stories. Let us know your particular interests.

Themes include:

• Weather
• Living and non-living
• Sustainable living
• Valued plants
• Local history

Providers of holiday care programs are welcome to book a visit to the Gardens during school holiday times.

[email protected] provides holiday activities for families. These sessions are generally held in the mornings and are advertised a few weeks prior to each holiday period. Providers of holiday care programs are welcome to book a separate session for their group (please contact the GBG office).

Bookings may be made for the current holiday program topic, or one of the regular schools programs (For example: Follow your nose, Bats, books and big trees, Living fossils etc).

Note that winter and spring programs are based in the Gardens meeting room.

Without water, our Gardens would be a very different place. Discover:

• How water influences the plants that we grow
• Why plants need water
• How recycled water is helping to safeguard the Gardens for future generations
• The creatures that live in our ponds

The Botanic Garden and Eastern Park provide an ideal habitat for many animals, insects and birds.

This program focuses on the several species of bats which call Eastern Park home. Activities include a bats facts trail, a story, bat craft and a walk to view the Eastern Park bats or flying foxes.

Students are introduced to some of the plants that have survived on earth virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs!

This is an interactive program giving hands on experience in making a “fossil” to take away. Students are challenged to find Living Fossils on a discovery trail around the gardens.

Students discover the natural world by “Looking Up”. Resources are provided to help students identify birds, insects, clouds and other aspects of the Gardens and answer a quiz sheet as they explore the Gardens for themselves.

The program concludes with a walk into Eastern Park to visit the fruit bat (flying fox) colony.

Students discover the world of plants through a range of activities designed to introduce them to plants in all their diversity.

• Make friends with a tree
• Hunt for our iconic trees and discover the variations in seeds and fruits with the Sprout Tree Trail
• Design and set up your own experiment to determine what seeds need to grow. Take away your experiment to compete in the classroom
• Discover the stories behind some of the plants and other structures in the Gardens

The Geelong Botanic Gardens offers students the chance to extend their mathematics skills in an outdoor environment.

Let us know your particular interests. Themes include:

• Maps
• Discovering numbers, patterns and shapes
• Measuring big trees

Botanic Gardens are living libraries for plants. Students will:

• Learn how scientists sort and classify plant material
• Discover the secrets of plants scientific names
• Their own plant material from a wide variety of plants
• Use different methods to sort and classify living things