Learning and Connecting Through Food and Culture

Food has a unique way of bringing people together. Our partner charity, Garden to Table, is helping tamariki celebrate culture, learn from one another, and build a stronger sense of belonging through every seed they plant and every meal they share.

Food has always been one of the most powerful ways to understand each other. It carries memory, identity, and belonging – and for the tamariki taking part in Garden to Table across Aotearoa New Zealand, it's a doorway into the cultures that make up their school communities.

Garden to Table connects young learners with growing, harvesting, preparing and sharing their own food. But schools are discovering that the garden and kitchen are also the perfect places to explore language, heritage, and cultural identity. 

Throughout the year, schools mark occasions such as Te Wiki o te reo Māori and Matariki, alongside a vibrant calendar of international cultural celebrations – from Tongan Language Week to Diwali and Chinese New Year. Garden to Table helps bring these moments to life through food. 

Students make dumplings for Chinese New Year, picking up the craft and symbolism alongside a few key phrases. During Tongan Language Week, kitchens fill with the warm scent of keke vai (banana pancakes) as students practice the language while they cook. A recipe becomes a lesson in history, local knowledge, geography, and culture all at once.

During Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori the rumaki (immersion) class from Te Kura Tuatahi o Māngere ki te Rāwhiti (Māngere East School) was up for the wero (challenge) of cooking in Te Reo Māori from the Garden to Table collection of tohutao (recipes). They worked together and used their reo to cook a delicious meal of tunu parāoa rimurapa puanīko (cauliflower mac and cheese). 

Some of the most meaningful moments come from the community itself. At Holy Cross School in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a grandparent visited his grandson's garden session to plant oregano seedlings in the garden, showing tamariki how the dried leaves produce a key ingredient in Lebanese za'atar. It was a quiet but powerful moment of traditional knowledge passing between generations, right in the school garden – a reminder of the special knowledge held in every school community.

To support this, Garden to Table has developed resources for member schools and early childhood centres including a collection of cultural recipes grounded in real culinary traditions, and a resource exploring traditional gardening practices in South Auckland, drawing on the knowledge of communities who have long cultivated the land in ways deeply connected to culture and place.

At the heart of it all is a simple but important idea: every child can see themselves and their culture reflected at Garden to Table. When a student recognises their family's food in a school kitchen, or hears a word from home spoken proudly in class, it changes their relationship with learning. Food brings us together, and it is beautiful to see how the hundreds of schools and centres involved in Garden to Table celebrate the unique cultures of their communities.

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Words and images supplied by Garden to Table.