Children's Gardens at RHS Chelsea

A Child's Garden in Wales

The Chelsea Flower Show must be one of the few UK flower shows that does not encourage children to attend.  I only saw one child visitor and two children behind a stand on the day I attended. Children's growing was highlighted in several gardens this year.

My favourite was A Child's Garden in Wales. A 1940s inspired garden created by Anthea Guthrie, with the teenage boys from special needs schools in Heronsbridge and Ysgol Bryn Castell Wales with whom she had been working with for two years.  Home made footballs and hobby horses, a rusted iron junk fence with umbrella spokes all feature.  No plastic toys in sight.  As the garden is set in 1947 most of it is given over to fruit and vegetables.  The few annuals children then would have grown are surprisingly similar to those children would have grown today, including Love in the Mist, Calendula, forget me nots and night scented stock. They are similar to the easy grow flowers seeds I use with my son.  Its great that the children researched the history of the garden

Calendula flowers amongst the vegetables

Another group of schools showcasing flower and food growing were to be found at the Miracle Growers Learning Journey garden.  If you look at their site  you'll see they had some royal visitors.

Radishes from the Learning Journey

The cut flower part of the garden highlighted 9 inner city schools in south east London where the children grew their own cut flowers and able to take a learning journey into plant care. The project recognised that many urban schools are surrounded by hard urban views with little foliage and flowers. It demonstrated that
even schools without land garden soil can grow in containers,

Similarly the fruit and veg part of the garden demonstrated how the children in schools throughout the country grew food without a vegetable patch using window sills and containers on hard landscaped areas. The photograph shows the large variety of radishes which were grown, a really easy plant for children to grow.

If you have a favourite Chelsea garden this year please let us know.  If you are growing food and flowers in your school please get in touch we'd love to hear from you.

Three Doors at RHS Chelsea that all Kids will Love

I visited the Chelsea Flower Show in London yesterday.  If you are in the UK you will know that the papers and television have been overflowing with reviews of it.  The show certainly lived up to expectations.  I arrived as the gates opened at 8.00am which allowed for a quiet first hour and enabled me to take photos without the crowds.

There is a fuller more meaty post to follow about what the show had to offer children's gardening.  What I often take away from garden shows are one or two details where I think, I could do that or that will work in my garden.  On that basis I'd like to share three images with you.  They will appeal to children of all ages.  The first is from the Fever-Tree's Tree House garden designed by Stephen Hall.  This had a beautiful low level tree house with the most enchanting door.  No child would be able to resist going through this.  It conjures up images of secret gardens and hidden worlds.  Just raising the house off the floor by one/two feet added to the interest.



Tree House Garden


Faces in the garden are a firm favourite of mine.  Carving a face in the door to this tree house such a simple and clever idea.  It could translate quite easily to a tall garden gate or even a fence.

Finally a 'dor' with a difference.  A sculpture of this minute dormouse rolled up asleep in a  nutshell was quite
exquisite.





CBeebies, Gardening and Mr Bloom's Nursery

At the beginning of last year I wrote a piece on the blog about CBeebies and Gardening.  The BBC has now applied even more creativity to its childrens' programming and produced an entertaining veggie puppet show with Mr Bloom's Nursery.  Its worth a watch even if you don't have kids - well a short watch.  Its website has a great range of games and gardening related actitivies for younger children.

At the core of the daily life of the nursery are a group of singing, talking and moving veggies with rather traditional names.  There is Margaret the Cabbage and Joan the Fennel.  Soft toy vegetables are rather more endearing then the usual plastic vegetables available as part of food sets.  If you like the toys on Mr Bloom's Nursery then you are bound to fall in love with those featured our kidsinthegardenshop.  Each character has floppy arms and legs and a very smiley face. 





Kids in the Garden Soft Toy Vegetables

 



Tom Turnip



Tammy Tomato

Will they encourage and inspire your children to get growing and to eat vegetables?  They certainly will entertain them and provide loads of fun and from the planting of little seedlings great things can grow.

Potato Grass Heads, Children’s Plant Markers and Recycling Red Noses

Kids’ garden activities are now a routine part of most gardening events. So with a kidsinthegarden stall at our local seedy Sunday the childrens’ gardening activities fitted neatly with me.

By popular request potato head grass heads were on offer. If you have never created these creatures here’s how we did it.

Ingredients

10-12 inches of part of a pair of tights
Sawdust (from local pet shop)
Grass seed
Stick on eyes
Plastic cup

Tie one end of the tights and add a dessert spoon full of grass seed. Top up with sawdust to form oval face shape and tie at the bottom of head. Grass seed must to at the top of the head.  Create a face on the tights. Roll head in a saucer of water and keep damp. Within a couple of weeks, maybe less, a hairy grass top will show. Keep watering the grass and snip when necessary. It really is that easy.

The most popular gardening activity with the children was making plant markers, perhaps because of the immediate effect. For these I used:-

Small polystyrene balls (ping pong balls will also work)
Barbeque sticks
Drinking straws
Rubber bands to keep straw on sticks
Eyes

Assemble and let the children create their own images (use waterproof pens). Planting in the garden is, of course, optional, but highly recommended. Children love to mark ownership of any seeds and plants they may have planted.



If you still have your red nose from red nose day why not recycle it.  It makes a lovely colourful plant marker.

World Book Day: A Book to Inspire your Children to Garden

If I could only take one children's gardening book on to that desert island it would have to be 'Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow' by Sarah Garland. It is a simple, homely and feel good story about a little boy growing vegetables and flowers with his family. It has held the attention of my 6 year old for the last 3 years and there is still more staying power in it.

Give your child their own plot of earth, let them dig and plant their own seeds and any child will identify with Eddie. What helps Eddie's garden to grow? Your little ones may well be able to answer that question and you certainly will because you will be reading it to them lots of time.

The story involves 3 generations of the same family. A nice touch as grandparents often help with nurturing those little green fingers. The illustrations include colourful characters from the garden. The ubiquitous robin always around when digging is on the go, wriggly worms and those evil snails. Eddie himself is inspired by the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk.

There is a useful list of Eddie's plants of 12 vegetables and edible flowers, with brief growing instructions. It is a great starter gardening book.

If you only read your children one book about gardening let it be this one. This is the time of year to get growing and sowing and this is the ideal book to read with your kids.

Growing Upwards, Spring and Ball-Proof Glass

RHS Spring and Design Show
Spring was certainly in the Air at the 2011 RHS Plant and Design Show in London yesterday. This is a gardening show which doesn’t usually have a kid’s element to it. However there were a few unexpected snippets of interest to families with young children.

Plant Heritage’s display held an amazing collection of early spring blossoms, many from ordinary gardens. It demonstrated just how much is in bloom in February and was a timely reminder to me to bring in a few cutting from branches of shrubs from the garden into the house. An opportunity for children to use their sense of smell.  The stall below is an example I suspect of how we would all like our garden to look in the spring.

Mini Greenhouses

I have owned an Access mini greenhouse for about 9 years, although sadly it is at present rather empty and uncared for. It will receive some TLC and be filled with seedlings in the next few weeks. I find a mini greenhouse a good alternative for those of us with gardens too small for a grown up greenhouse.

My sister has asked for one for her birthday. I had thought that the constant presence of cricket and footballs in her garden would rule out a glass house. However I have now been assured by the Access guy at the show that the glass can withstand a hit from either. Surely a great selling point. I’ll let you know how it survives the summer.

My mini greenhouse

The theme of the show was roof top gardens or as the blurb put it 'green roofing for urban spaces'.  Whilst I would not consider a roof garden to be an option for a family I loved the planting on the vertical walls.  This would be great those with tiny patio gardens.

Finally I thought you may like to see the latest version of a ‘green’ car. It was spotted on the road outside the show.

Happy First Birthday. Garden Stars of the Year

We have had a great first year on the blog. When I asked my son what he had enjoyed most about our garden, without any hesitation he listed the following:-

• Digging.
• Looking at the vegetables and feeling how heavy they were.
• Eating the vegetables.
• Finding ‘bones’ in the soil.

Gardens are great spaces to reflect in and also reflect about and its good to see that his memories can be so easily recalled. Our little plot this year has been tranquil, productive and beautiful. The veg area was a great success (why oh why didn’t I start it before?).

My garden stars of the year have been:-

1. Very unexpectedly the french beans which were so very tasty to eat and easy to grow. So there will be more grown up the fence this year and over my son’s den.
2. Nasturtiums which are such good flowers for children to grow. Dare I say even better to grow than sunflowers. Ours reseeded from last year. Because of last years cold winter they took a while to get going, but then flowered until November. It was lovely having some extra peppery flavour to our salads.
3. There are no hostas grown in the ground in the garden as they are munched to death. But hostas in pots do survive and my Sum and Substance hosta looked wonderful this year.
4. My son who has really enjoyed all garden activity.  When it was suggested he should draw a flower he didn't just draw the standard sunflower-type flower.  He produced a whole page of Venus Flytraps, including their food.  I think perhaps we have visited Kew Gardens a bit too often.

Looking forward to our 2011 garden.