Pallet Precautions
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Old School Gardener
Category: Design
A ‘screen’ of air plants
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Patterns to move through- Alliums and Laburnum tunnel= glorious
Old School Gardener
On Tuesday I attended the latest meeting of the national Landscapes for Early Childhood Network, at the Earlham Early Years Centre in Norwich. The Network, which I joined last year, brings together professionals working with young children and those concerned with designing and creating play and other landscapes for them. It provides a powerful creative forum for discussion of ideas and approaches to early years spaces and activities and also gives a wonderful opportunity to visit excellent examples of these landscapes, sometimes in schools or nurseries, sometimes in public open spaces.
I was pleased to speak at this week’s meeting on the topic of ‘learning for sustainability’ (or as I termed it ‘Nurturing Nurture’) – how we encourage children (and adults for that matter), to understand the way the world works, how mankind’s activities affect this and what can be done to live more sustainably. I talked about the word ‘sustainability’ and how this has become rather diluted and misused in modern language, but is really about maintaining an ecological balance in the world where non renewable natural resources are used (and reused) carefully, if at all.
I featured some of my own work in this field, especially working with youngsters in school gardening activities as well as creating play landscapes and other spaces which inspire younger children to develop their curiosity, imagination and understanding of the natural world. I focused in particular on the importance of engaging children in food growing as a way of contributing towards food production and security.
Presentations were also given by other network members on their work, but the main event was to see and hear about the very special ‘garden’ at the Earlham EYC. Felicity Thomas, the original head teacher and her colleagues gave us a wonderful guided tour of the garden (it was great seeing the children busy in it as we went around), and told us about why and how it had been developed. The brief for the original design (which has since evolved over the last ten years), is worth sharing, so I repeat it below along with a slide show of pictures I took (which for security reasons do not include the children). I hope you enjoy them.
‘To create a unique environment for children and others using the Centre which demonstrates sustainable principles in practice, where children can:-
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access a varied topography in scale, contour and texture, incorporating dramatic changes in level, big mounds, large areas of sand in which to prospect.
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plant, grow, harvest and cook food.
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hide and not be seen, find and create places for refuge and reflection; read, share stories and use their imagination.
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go on expeditions and journeys; develop an understanding of positional words by having places to be in, under, behind, below and above.
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experience and understand the elements; interact with moving water, solar power and wind, be protected from the sun.
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explore their senses through plants, materials and elements which provide a myriad of colour, shape, sound, texture and smell.
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independently access equipment and loose materials.
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learn to care and take responsibility for themselves, each other and the environment.
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be happy, be fulfilled.’
Old School Gardener
Two new rounds of my courses on Garden Design and Grow Your Own Food for Beginners start soon, and I’m also offering a new, one day course on Wildlife Gardening. I ran the last Garden Design course earlier this year and had great feedback on it (I even had a thank you present from the students!). All the courses feature a lot of group discussion and some practical tasks as well as useful tips and tricks to help particpants apply what they learn to their own plots.
The Garden Design course takes students through a customised design process, prompting a fresh look at participants’ own gardens, giving them the opportunity to develop their own ideas in a systematic way and benefitting from ideas generated in the whole group. I support participants to draw up their own scale plan design for their garden and supply plenty of useful background information and links to helpful web sources as well as the opportunity to borrow from my own garden book library. The course can also feature a visit to a well known garden to look at design ideas in practice.
The ‘GYO’ course is aimed at food-growing beginners or novices and gets off to a flying start with making paper pots and sowing broad bean seeds. It also prompts students to look at what they want to eat/grow and how they might do this most effectively in their own plots – this can include growing in containers for those with little or no garden.The course includes a visit to Old School Garden to look at my own approach to food growing, and covers topics like soils and soil improvement, growing under glass, encouraging beneficial wildlife into your garden and how to effectively control pests and diseases.
Narrow beds in the Kitchen Garden at Old School Garden
The one day Wildlife Gardening course, taking place at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, makes use of the Wildlife Garden at the Museum and includes some practical work to help develop the wildlife -friendly features there as well as helping participants to focus on their own gardens and gardening practices. The aim is for them to develop their own action plans for the future.
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The Wild life Garden at Gressenhall Farm and Museum
The courses are fast filling up but there are some places still available if you’re quick!
They are running as follows:
Garden Design– 6 Monday evenings, 7pm-9pm at Reepham High School & College, commencing on 12th May.
Grow Your Own Food for Beginners – 6 Wednesday evenings, 7pm-9pm at Reepham High School and College, commencing 14th May.
Get more details and how to enrol at www.reephamlearningcommunity.co.uk
Wildlife Gardening- Sunday 18th May, 10am-4pm at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, near Dereham.
For more information on this and other short courses at the Museum see www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk
Old School Gardener
picture via Green Renaissance
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Planting as form at Marqueyssac, France
Old School Gardener
It’s William Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday celebration, and therefore another golden opportunity to talk about Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. But what is the connection you may ask? Brown was born a clear century after Shakespeare passed away!
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Farming following the contours of the land in Minnesota
via Kids’ Brittanica
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Old School Garden 