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Welcome to our first school gardening club post. Along with another parent I’m running a lunchtime gardening club for the Year 4s (8- and 9-year-olds) at my daughter’s school. And what a lovely first group of young gardeners we have – they all turned up, put on their gloves and got stuck straight in.
Our school gardening club mission
The aims of the club are:
:: for the children to enjoy lots of hands-on experience of growing. We’re trying fruit, vegetables and flowers and will be finding out from the children what they would like to grow
:: to make the garden as eco-friendly as possible, reducing, recycling and reusing as much as we can, and trying to encourage lots of wildlife into the garden. We’re using peat-free compost and looking for organic ways to garden
:: to create a beautiful spot in the centre of the school, which offers plenty that tastes, smells, feels, sounds and looks great
:: to do this frugally, using some of what we grow to raise funds and with kind support from parents by way of donated vouchers, seeds and seedlings
We are very lucky to have a great set up ready and waiting for the gardening club to use. Our Secret Eco Garden is in an enclosed courtyard, with two raised beds which get plenty of sunshine, a mini greenhouse and a compost bin. We have water in an adjoining classroom and are working out the best location for our water butt so we can collect and use rainwater. We even have two picnic tables and benches. It’s a really great space to get growing.
School gardening club: October and November ideas
Plans for the gardening club this October/November/December half-term include:
:: harvest the last of the tomatoes
:: plant some raspberry canes
:: feed the soil with chicken manure pellets (I thought the kids would turn their noses up at this – in both senses! – but they loved it)
:: plant for some spring prettiness: tulips, daffodils, winter pansies, wall flowers
:: plant an end of term take-home gift: hyacinths
:: sew some rocket and hardy salad
:: pot up the strawberry runners
:: sew some sweetpeas to over winter in the greenhouse
:: plant onion sets and garlic
:: decorate a flower pot to show off the hyacinths
:: make our own plant labels
We’re really excited to get started on our Secret Eco Garden. I’ll be sharing some of our planting ideas and garden crafts as we go along and I’m hoping you’ll share some ideas with us too. Are you involved in a school gardening club – any tips, any recommendations, any sites you’d suggest for us?
Creative ways to use nature to inspire learning
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What a wonderful idea! I can’t wait to see more of what you do.
Thanks Laura!
Thank goodness I’ve found you! Have started a school gardening club and finding it tricky to think of ideas every week, especially when it’s raining. What a great idea to blog about it.
Hello Middle-aged Matron – great to link up with you. We are lucky to have the use of a classroom if it’s really awful weather so we can still plant seeds, do some garden crafts etc. I’m so glad you left a comment – I’m looking forward to comparing notes with you now!
What an exciting project! I created a garden club for kids (~age 10) when I was in my 20s. Now that I have kids of my own, I can appreciate even more what a great experience it would be for them. Good luck! -Amy
Oh Cathy, what a wonderful idea for a school club! If only I could keep anything other than children alive, I would definitely start one up at our school!
Thanks for linking this up to the Outdoor Play Party – will be sharing this everywhere! 😉
Jane
Cathy I love this idea, we have a gardening club as an afterschool idea & we have some very earnest brown bin monitors but this idea is wonderful Thanks for linking up this week & keep us posted as the school year progresses. Did you see Juliet’s post today on the Czech nursery – they have a similar gardening project going on. Thanks again – those tomatoes look amazing!
Thanks Kierna and Mama Pea Pod – I’ll go and visit Juliet 🙂
so many yummy tomatoes
next year I hope our garden does really good!
We have 2 gardens at our school a parent and a kids garden its great fun n amzing to watch the kids chomp away on snow peas n carry big heads of cabbages home. Keep up the good work n love your site xC n all the garden gang in Sunny Sydney Australia
Thank you Catweasle. I find with my own two girls that they try all sorts of fruit and veggies if they’re growing them themselves. I’m hoping we get a good harvest at school 🙂
What a wonderful idea. I would love to run a school garden. Now that my children are older I miss being around the young ones. This is great food for thought. Thank you.
I LOVE that you are able to do this. What a fantastic hands-on learning experience. I can’t wait to see what happens as you continue to work on it.
Thanks for sharing & linking to the Sunday Showcase! Hope to see you this week.
Bern
http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunday%20Showcase
I love this idea. My daughters attend an international baccalaureate charter school and I do think this will be a very welcomed idea when their new place space/garden area is finished this summer. I will see about starting this up! Right now they both have wormeries in their classrooms. So gross yet so awesome at the same time. : ) Right now Jadyn’s job is to spray the compost/worms each day.
Glad I stumbled upon this pin as I help run our school garden club at our primary school. It is now in it’s third year and the children have achieved so much in that time. You can see some of the work we did last year as the children in the club keep a diary over the year and we publish some of their work on our school website. other photos are put into a scrap book and this was really useful when showing the judges around the garden when we entered the East Midland in Bloom school garden competition. ( we received gold Award). Last year we were given a Christmas tree by a local farmer so the first project this year in the gardening club ( October onwards) was making natural decorations for the tree planted in the school garden ( also decorated with solar powered lights). We are developing an Eco school so our aim is to get all children learning out in the garden at some point but that will take some time and is a whole school project. in the mean time myself and another colleague keep the. Garden club running one night a week after school and it is a lovely club to be part of.
Hi Sue. I sounds like you are doing wonderful work. I’m heading over to your site to take a look. Cathy
I need to update the website as The garden looked lovely with all the summer flowers in bloom , especially the poppy garden. It contains scarecrows at the moment from our art week in October where each class made one for the garden.