Home & Garden soil into 9 smaller squares using sticks, canes or string. In each square let your children grow whatever they please. It may be three radishes and a runner bean, a smiley face of carrots, a few peas or some sunflowers. Anything goes. Sunflowers will need tying to a stick, a good lesson in knot tying. You will get a mix of everything in one tiny space and it’s amazing how much 1m2 yields. Great for getting children to try out new foods too.
Potatoes in pots Vegetables grow well in containers. Easiest of all are potatoes. You just plant a large container with a couple of seed potatoes, water and watch them grow and in a couple of months you can empty the pot and harvest your own crop of delicious new potatoes. It’s like magic. For those home schooling this links beautifully with maths, weights, volumes, and life cycles of a plant.
Mix vegetables into your flower beds If you fancy growing a few vegetables in your garden but don’t like the idea of uprooting your flower beds, try incorporating ornamental veg plants in amongst the borders. Wigwams of climbing beans are architectural and ornamental. Try Purple Teepee with black beans and purple foliage. Think courgette is the new hosta. Add drama with giant artichokes which contrast beautifully with dusky red orache leaves. And chives make a wonderful edible edging, like miniature alliums.
Home schooling Working from home and home schooling your children in lock down is challenging and stressful. A garden is a great source of data. Think of it as an outdoor classroom. Children relax, engage and concentrate well outdoors. Try putting a table outside as a private work station. Or use your garden for maths, counting numbers of petals on flowers, spots on ladybirds, yields of vegetables. Identify wildlife, write plant labels, create ephemeral flower art, the possibilities are endless, and gardening increases lateral thinking and hand eye coordination too, all good life skills.
From top: New born Golden Guernsey goat kid. Ephemeral flower art. Square foot garden and cornus off cuts for pea colourful sticks. Woodland treasures Ellicar's woodland walk.
An outdoor classroom Children have an eye for detail. They like finding things. Set up garden treasure hunts to find serrated leaves, shiny leaves, how-many-shades-of-green leaves, four leaved clovers, coloured flowers, different shaped flowers. Stick them onto double sided sticky tape to make floral bracelets and headbands. Press them onto cards. Use your garden and walks for data collecting, go on an inset hunt. Start a wildlife log, record all the different bird species. Build insect houses, bee boxes, make hedgehog houses, dig a small pond. It won’t be long before your children are telling you all about mason bees, red tailed bumble bees, life cycles of butterflies, which flowers they all prefer and how they feed. The internet is a great source of insect identification. Give them a magnifying glass to examine insects and flowers in minute detail.
And finally … Lock down is tough on us all, with so many knock-on effects to our businesses, jobs, families health and wellbeing. Our UK growers and nurseries have been hit hard in what is their peak season. With garden centres closed nurseries are unable to dispatch and sell their plants. Across the UK many growers and nurseries are left with little option but to destroy fields full of thousands and thousands of plants. I know because I’m married to a nurseryman and it is happening to us right now. Without our dedicated UK nurseries growing beautiful plants for us our gardens would not be the special places they are. So if you are keen to buy plants contact your local nurseries and garden centres direct. You will be surprised to find out how accommodating they will be.
Ellicar Gardens are closed during COVID-19. Although our plant yard is currently closed for browsing, we do have a range of beautiful perennials, grasses, herbs and shrubs availble to purchase now by pre-order and pre payment for collection at our gate. Please email: sarah@ellicargardens.co.uk for an availability list, prices and information on how to purchase. www.ellicargardens.co.uk
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