HOME GROWN food and herbs

Growing food, herbs and flowers for a purpose is a wonderfully sustainable, and fulfilling activity for children and colleagues to engage in. Knowledge of plants plays a vital role when it comes to growing your own produce. Plants often succumb to the slugs and eaten before they are harvested.

There are a number of different gardening activities that can be implemented in nurseries, schools and homes, with options to suit all garden sizes!

Here are some of our favourites:

• The recycled garden – growing plants in old furniture, past its potential for upcycling
• Plant a window box of herbs with the children
• Try writing letters in a salad by filling a tray with earth and sowing salad seeds in the shape of a name
• Try pasting the photograph of a child’s face or an adult’s face onto a pot and growing some grass, mustard and cress (sprouted seeds) hair. All these grow quickly, which helps smaller children engage more easily.
• Grow your own pizza toppings idea. Outline a planting area in a big circle with stones, dividing the circle into slices and growing pizza toppings such as tomatoes, peppers, basil, rocket, spinach and rainbow chard.

Generally, there will be a need to invest a little in gardening activities as you need forks, trowels, watering cans, compost, pots and seeds or plants. Having a water butt will come in very useful for the children to water the plants. The activity of transferring water from the butt, into their watering cans to the plants is great for physical strength and coordination.

Some nurseries may not have a lot of gardening space for growing so have taken on a vegetable patch or allotment close by, and then they make regular trips to do their gardening work.