News : Roundswell & Sticklepath

Sow hardy annuals into garden soil: young children will enjoy shaking poppy seed heads over bare soil, as they make a pleasing rattling noise.

Go seed gathering with your children: this will open up their understanding of how the plant world works, and will focus their attention on interesting seedheads that they might otherwise miss. Cardiocrinum seedheads are particularly dramatic if you have one in flower, and tree seeds are fascinating with their various ‘wings’ (sycamores and maples) and spiny cases (horse chestnuts, for example). Get children to thresh and crush dried up Tagetes flowers and collect the seed in a bucket, or set them to mashing Sorbus berries through a sieve to extract the seeds from within.

Sow sweet peas, oaks and sycamores: Sweet peas are large and easy to push into dibbed holes in a deep pot of compost; sycamores have ‘winged’ seed cases, and can be sown whole with the wings still attached; acorns are easy to handle and fun to sow.

Tree seeds should be sown into deep pots of soil-based seed compost, covered with fine grit, and kept in a cold frame or sheltered spot for next spring. They should be potted on once large enough to handle, hardened off to outside conditions, and then planted out in their final positions once robust enough to survive.

Make a hedgehog hibernation hotel: Although hedgehogs are often happy to hibernate in a pile of old leaves and twigs, some wildlife enthusiasts have reported success with a constructed wooden box plus an entrance tunnel, buried under old leaves. This project will capture the imaginations of both young wildlife lovers and young construction enthusiasts. A wooden box with a small entrance hole (10-12sq cm or 4-5sq in) makes the nest, and a covered tunnel leading to the entrance helps to prevent foxes and other predators from raiding it. A tunnel can easily be made from old bricks with a wooden plank laid over them. You can then watch hedgehogs come and go from the box in a known location.