Garden Update 

What a wonderful summer we had in our preschool garden this year. We have spent so much time exploring, planting, bug hunting, caring for our plants and watching them grow. As autumn is now showing its colours, it’s time to harvest the last of our fruits and vegetables and get the garden ready for winter. We will have to leave our pumpkin a little longer as it is only just beginning to turn orange, but hopefully it should be ready in time for our Halloween activities. 

We always love eating the fruits and vegetables that we have grown ourselves. We have had carrots, broad beans, peas and tomatoes this year. Peas fresh from the pod have been the favourite. Part of the excitement is finding them hidden in their pods. It’s amazing how children are more open to trying new foods when they have grown them themselves!

Bug hunting had definitely been the favourite activity of the summer. It is so exciting when you lift a log and discover what is hidden underneath. We have all been practising picking up the bugs very gently using tweezers or brushing them into our bug pots with a soft paintbrush. It is important we look after the creatures in our garden. We have learnt some wonderful new facts about the animals that live there too. Did you know a slug has one foot?

Building on our love of bug hunting and watching creatures in our garden, we now have a little pond. Thanks to a donation from a parent at the end of the last school year, we were able to buy a half oak barrel and make it into a pond. It was set up over the summer holidays and is already teeming with life. It’s exciting to look in and see the pond snails and creatures living in there. We have tried some pond dipping too.

Another wonderful new addition to our garden is our beautiful mural which we were lucky enough to have painted by a very talented parent. It is beautiful and brightens up our garden so much. It will help ensure our garden is a cheery place to be in, even through the winter months.

Watch out for wonderful winter colour coming into our garden soon as we plant up some colourful flowers and plants. We love to keep our garden looking bright and beautiful. We all love helping to look after the plants too. Donations of compost and plants are always very welcome and much appreciated.

Garden Update March 2023  

The sun has started showing it’s face again so it’s time to get back to work in our garden. Thanks to the garden makeover, and the donation of a wonderful Vegtrug, it means we are excited to make this the best year ever! 

We have lots of plants we want to grow from seed over the next couple of months. The children will be planting these up and popping them in the greenhouse, keeping an eye on them and watering them, ensuring they grow nice and strong. We love exploring how things grow. We grow beans in clear plastic wallets indoors, so that we can understand what happens to the seeds underneath the soil. We watch how the roots and shoots begin to grow before measuring how tall our giant beanstalk gets.

We will be growing our own salad plants, ready for a yummy snack. There will be lettuce, radishes, tomatoes and hopefully some cucumbers too.

There will definitely be some carrots as we have loved making our carrot and coriander soup before. We will even grow the coriander in our herb garden.

The potatoes are currently chitting on our windowsill inside. When ready the children will plant them up in recycled potato bags. Its great fun covering the shoots as they break through the soil and then later going on a hunt through the soil to find the potatoes.

We will grow tall runner beans, peas hiding waiting to be discovered in their pods, sweetcorn covered in their silks and green leaves and bright orange pumpkins ready for harvest and Halloween.

Most of all we can’t forget the flowers too. The children will be replacing the tired plants in our milk bottle planters and sowing some lovely flower seeds in between the herbs in our raised garden. Not only do the flowers brighten the garden, but they encourage in the wildlife. We all love to go on a bug hunt and find out what little creatures call our garden their home.       

  

Keep an eye on what is growing in our garden and ask your children what they have been planting. We will be sending a sunflower home with every child after Easter. How tall can you help it grow?

Natalie