A group drawn from across the community (polytechnic and wider), decides to plant some heritage beans to provide a link between a permaculture area and a heritage garden area:

• Students from design work on an interpretive material to engage visitors in nitrogen cycles...
• Students from horticulture plant the beans, in a plot built by carpentry students and irrigated by a drip system designed by computing students...
• The plot is on a steep slope but an expert from Organics Dunedin helped Engineering students do an analysis of the maintenance of the slope by a fallow contour system...
• The growing stripes are a source of amusement for office workers on the buses that trundle past the campus...
• The growing beans form around a garden seat, a favoured spot for lunches (perhaps because of the stunning sculpture from the creative studies students)...
• A local organic specialist notices a whitefly on the beans and recommends some companion planting of a herb (which coincidentally a class of occupational therapy students had been exploring as a remedy, so they plant it)...
• A class of visiting primary school students helps to weed the beans and each completes a design of their home garden...
• Students from hospitality and business are aware of when the beans will mature and menus are designed to use crops in season...
• When the beans mature, half go to a charity, the other half to hospitality students who prepare meals for the student café...
• The beans (in a delicious salad with nuts from our trees) are eaten by students in the herb garden outside the café where the table has a well designed sign giving information about today's food - including how to grow it...
• A student who loved the salad goes to the LivingCampus shed where she is given a packet of the heritage bean seeds by an expert from the Herb Society and a student volunteer offers to help her plant them in her flat garden...

The LivingCampus is high visibility action that will encourage and strengthen existing partnerships. It will also provide a vehicle for new partnerships. This is a community effort in planning, design and implementation.

Otago Polytechnic has existing partnerships with a large number of groups. Many of these have contributed positively to this application and are excited in their proposed contributions: Otago Polytechnic Students Association (OPSA); Natural Step; Otago Museum; Enviroschools; Sustainable Business Network; NZIM; United Way; Adult Community Education network; New Zealand Association of Environmental Education; Dunedin City Council (especially botanic gardens); Tertiary Accord of New Zealand (TANZ); University of Otago; Upstart Incubator; Rural Education Activity Programme (REAP); Sustainable Otago; Te Tapuae o Rehua.

Critical partnerships are those Te Rūnanga o Moeraki, Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Te Rūnanaga o Ōtākou, Hokonui Rūnanga Inc (kā Papatipu Rūnaka). They are active in this project. Beyond the educational, environmental and Māori knowledge aspects, this garden can directly introduce the following groups to kai Māori and rauemi Māori (Māori food and resources).

Students and lecturers from cookery to art, and horticulture to health areas will be able to access alternative resources, vegetables and other flora. In so doing establishing this particular garden itself in collaboration with a whānau and hapū (tribal Council) project within the Iwi and local Rūnaka. Sustainable use of naturally occurring resources and associated practices that value the environment can be further enhanced in this way using the concepts of kaitiakitaka (guardianship)and rāhuitaka (seasonal restrictions of resource use).

Further to the many uses alluded to, the medicinal uses for certain flora (such as flax seed (made into oil) the sap from certain trees as a healant and the semi-herbal uses of many of the native trees for simple ailments would benefit students who might access such a garden. This knowledge could nicely complement what students in the health areas access using mainstream training.

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