News : Roundswell & Sticklepath

Plant up a ‘pet’ pot garden: Involve children in all stages of the process, from choosing the pot and plants, filling it with crocks and compost, planting and watering in. Encourage them to check and take care of their ’pet’ garden themselves, noticing how the plants change through the seasons. You can choose any plants, from winter bedding through to permanent shrubs or trees.

Mulching is fun!: This is a good job for children who quickly grow impatient of dextrous and fiddly jobs, and who just want to have fun, get muddy, and throw muck around the garden. Gloves and wellies are a must, with strict instructions as to good hygiene around faces and mouths. You will need to check afterwards that no woody stems have been ‘collared’ by mulch, as this could cause their bark to rot, with consequent dieback later in the year.
Mixing up compost: Some children love to get their hands dirty, and will enjoy mixing up buckets of multi- purpose compost with perlite or grit. Mess need not be frowned upon in this context, and there is little risk of ‘doing it wrong’, or need for supervision.

Design a new area of the garden together: Encourage children to draw their own designs on paper, and introduce them to novel ways for generating ideas. Simple areas of the garden can be measured out and mapped onto a scale drawing. Cut-out shapes can then be arranged on the paper plan, playing with different shapes, arrangements and designs.  Discussion of what makes for a good design can be stimulating, and the child is drawn into learning about how to turn their chosen design into viable areas of planting. It is always interesting to compare the paper plan with the final result, and you will both learn an awful lot about design and the effects of growth and seasonal change in the process.