Today I had the pleasure of working with pupils at a local school, Carrfield Primary Academy, as part of their ‘Eco Day’!
I worked with four different year groups, first explaining to them how we turned our overgrown garden from this:
into a productive plot growing our own fruit and vegetables:
using the growveg.com planner:
We then talked about what you need to consider when designing a vegetable garden, how to choose which fruit and vegetables to grow, what is needed to enable them to grow, and other elements you might want to add to your plot.
The children also told me about their own experiences of growing fruit and vegetables at home, and to my delight, more than half the pupils in every session either knows someone who ‘grows their own’ or has something growing in their own garden; it seems tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes are the most popular crops in Bolton-upon-Dearne!
We had some fantastic discussions, these are some of my favourite quotes:
“Can you grow steak?”
Reading from the board: “What’s ‘Kall-ay’?” (that would be kale)
“When your chickens die, do you eat them?”
“I’ve drawn a waterfall in my garden to water the plants”
“I’m going to take this home and tell my Mum we need to do it in our back garden!”
The pupils then had a go at designing their own vegetable gardens based on my growveg.com plan, using graph paper and a lot of imagination!
Here are just some of the brilliant garden plans!
Gardening with Boys 