Kids start work on Children's Garden

On Monday 1 June, 35 primary school students took the first small but significant steps towards Albury having one of the country's most impressive children's gardens.

The Albury Public School students spent the morning making clay troll heads at the Botanic Gardens. Their work will adorn the inner sanctum of the new garden's spookiest feature - a troll cave, which children will enter through a 400-year-old hollow tree stump.

Albury Botanic Gardens Curator, Paul Scannell, says the troll cave will be built over the next few months.

When fundraising allows, the gardens will also include a fairy temple, a tree-house lookout, a path of dinosaur footprints, cubby houses, billabongs and a giant bower bird nest to crawl through and hide in.

"Aside from being great fun, the troll workshops are incredibly exciting, as they mark the first real steps towards the Children's Garden coming to fruition," Mr Scannell says.

"The Friends of The Botanic Gardens and their Children's Garden Working Group have spent three years getting to this point, putting great energy and enthusiasm into fundraising. This project has a real sense of community ownership, so it's fitting that children are creating something permanent that will help to make an extremely spooky troll cave."

Children's Garden Working Group member, Ms Lou Newman, is one of two mums who have driven the project. She says the group has raised about $60,000 in cash and in-kind support, including a generous $10,000 donation from VitaSoy Australia.

"We still have a long way to go with fundraising, so any support from the community is gratefully appreciated," she says.

She says it is very fitting for a community garden that kids are starting the hands-on work.

"It's nice to think that in years to come, they'll be able to come back and see what they contributed to the garden," she says.