WITH Remembrance Day falling on a Sunday this year, St William’s Catholic Primary School, Grovely, chose Friday, November 9, to open its newly built Remembrance Day Garden.
The garden is tucked into a space between an undercover area and the school flags and is adjacent to walkways and steps.
Eight tiled pavers made by students complement the central element of the garden that will eventually include a plaque honouring Australia’s service personnel.
Principal Anthony Lucey said the garden was part of a wider plan to bring visual arts into the school grounds.
“It’s one of our goals to create an environment where the arts are present in the gardens and in the buildings,” he said.
Mr Lucey said the garden site had been carefully chosen.
“It’s located in a precinct that’s close to the flags and it was a small area that we could locate and link the story of the school so it’s significant in its space and its connection,” he said.
St William’s assistant principal for religious education Kim Fehervary said students from Years 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 played a part in the creation of the garden.
“They made individual tiles that were then grouted onto eight pavers that are displayed within the garden,” she said.
Ms Fehervary said an adjacent walkway wall contained poppies made from tiles surrounding the words “and very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun” (Mark 16:2) was also made by students.
Mr Lucey said Remembrance gardens had an important role to play.
“If stories are not told, then the things that happened like that (Remembrance Day) don’t get discussed so if we don’t keep telling stories about what happened and why it happened then the things that created that, the bad things that created that, don’t get discussed and it doesn’t become part of the healing,” he said.
The St William’s student population includes a number of children of Australian Defence Force members.
