Celebrating One Year of Partnership with Garden to Table

Celebrating One Year of Partnership with Garden to Table: Bringing Pollinator Education to Schools Across Aotearoa 

We are incredibly proud to celebrate one year of partnership with the fantastic NZ charity, Garden to Table! Supporting communities to thrive and working in harmony with nature is at the heart of our connection with this inspiring organisation. 

Garden to Table has a unique and powerful mission: to empower New Zealand school children to grow, harvest, prepare, and share their own fresh, nutritious, and affordable kai. Their hands-on approach helps tamariki build knowledge and skills that have a transformative, lifelong impact on their wellbeing and on the planet. 

In 2024 alone, more than 34,000 primary and intermediate students grew, cooked, and ate over 1.3 million vegetable-based meals thanks to Garden to Table! 

As part of our Harmony Partnership, Comvita proudly donated 3,000 handmade pollinator seed balls and 125 kg of honey to 50 Garden to Table schools across the North Island in October 2024. To celebrate the kaupapa, five of these schools won a special Bee and Pollinator Learning Session by sharing photos of how they used the seed balls and honey in their kura. 

Led by Comvita’s Bee & Nature Advocacy Lead and passionate beekeeper, Noelani Waters, these engaging, hands-on sessions helped tamariki explore the fascinating world of bees and pollination. Students discovered how bees live and communicate, how pollination works and why it is so essential, who our native pollinators are, the roles of a beekeeper, and even got to try a waggle dance! They experienced the scent of propolis, the texture of real honeycomb, the taste of mānuka honey, dressed up like a beekeeper, and watched baby bees being born on a live frame of bees.  

Since the programme’s launch in FY24, we’ve had the immense privilege of sharing these sessions with over 4,300 students across Aotearoa. 

These learning experiences bring to life what we believe deeply at Comvita: that helping people, especially our next generation, understand the essential and magical role of bees builds greater respect, awe, and advocacy for these vital pollinators. We think this dovetails beautifully with the rich mission of Garden to Table and we look forward to continuing this meaningful partnership and pollination of ideas as we head into the next financial year, supporting tamariki to thrive one seed at a time!