Facilitated by the Victorian Schools Gardening Awards, about 20 teachers were taught how to best engage students to be champions of their school environment programs. 

Bendigo Botanic Gardens curator Brad Creme said it was important for children to know where food comes.

"A lot of kids who don't know where potatoes come from, for an example. If we can show them growing in the ground, then dig them up and make them into chips - it's the best way to engage kids in gardening," he said. 

Bendigo Early Learning Centre teacher Donna Harrison said the school had a gardening program.

"The children have started their own vegetable gardens in their backyard and have their own chickens and compost bins. The outcome has been really great with what the children have taken from the centre," she said.