Ready… Steady…GROW!

As we celebrate National Gardening Week, we wanted to invite you to join us on our allotment journey, to watch us grow into mini gardeners and become crop experts!

This month, throughout the nursery, we have been exploring the art of growing the best veggies in town including developing an allotment space to plant crunchy carrots, perfect potatoes, succulent strawberries, lush lettuces, plump peppers and tasty tomatoes!

We started our green finger mission by clearing our VERY over grown planter. This involved lots of heavy lifting developing our gross motor muscles, working together as a team and good communication. (We were all a bit sore the next day!) 

Once we moved the planter, this gave us a great blank canvas to start our Bug Hotel. Building a Bug Hotel in your garden is brilliant for a number of reasons. Not only can it provide a safe hideaway for wildlife but it can also help make use of any garden waste. A well-built Bug Hotel can shelter anything from hedgehogs to toads, solitary bees to bumble bees and ladybirds to wood lice. Creating this gave us a great opportunity to talk about showing care and concern for our environment and what different insects would like in their new home.

To get our creative ‘Juices’ flowing, the children set to work designing their own allotments, drawing flowers and delicious fruit and vegetables, as well as decorating stones and pebbles to add to the area. These pictures can be found hanging in our allotment area outside the front of the nursery. 

Now the exciting part begins… 

The children got down to business building our very own Greenhouse! Listening carefully to instructions and working together as a team, it was ready! We talked about all the things we wanted to grow inside the greenhouse and on the allotment, which led to discussion about healthy eating and looking after our planet, and we couldn’t wait to fill it with all our delicious fruit and vegetables.

Let the planting commence! As we planted our seeds, we talked about how best to care for them, as well as how important the sun is to grow our plants and how we must water them every day. 

We have also been getting creative, planting some flowers in wellies, which we have also added to our outside area.

The children have been using their gardening skills at home in their own gardens. It has been great to hear all about what they have achieved and what fun they have been having with their families. The fresh air is great  for our physical and mental well-being, as well as a great opportunity to promote a healthy lifestyle and to take care of our environment.

We have been given some amazing tips from the children on how to take care of your garden, here are a few :-

“Sprinkle egg shells to stop the slugs eating the flowers “ … Ida 

“You can use special seeds (slug pellets) to keep the slugs and snails away “…Amelia 

“Sprinkle the water on your plants with a watering can or a hose “…Phoebe 

“Keep rabbits away from strawberries plants” …Ted

“Some plants like lots of sun but some do not “…Isabel 

“Worms are good for your soil “ …Anaya 

Now our allotment is full steam ahead! We cannot wait to watch all our crops grow. We are going to be measuring our sunflowers using rulers, using our numbers to practice our amazing maths skills. We wonder how big they will get?????

Our allotment has been a fantastic addition to our nursery. There is so much to learn, explore and so much more fun to come … so watch this space!

Whether your garden is big, small or not really a garden at all, there are so many ways you can have a great gardening experience, whilst having fun in the great outdoors!

So, READY, STEADY ,GROW… and don’t forget to send us your pictures if you try this at home.