Page 22 - Allotment Gardener Issue 1 2024

SKOOL
BEANZ
A new concept in children’s allotment club is helping to educate the next generation of gardeners
RHS gardens and forest schools which are wonderful to encourage a love of nature but no countrywide gardening clubs - that all children can access - to teach them how to grow plants. Schools that are lucky enough to have a garden area, often have trouble maintaining plants during the long hot summer holiday - ironically the most interesting and abundant time of the growing year. Skool Beanz runs all through the holidays so is able to make the most of the summer.
My aim was to create a garden like no other. An Alice in Wonderland feast for the senses, tailored to children’s height and size. Every surface painted in vibrant colours and beautiful murals. Quirky giant veg, the tallest of flowers, textures, tastes and smells, upcycled art jangling in the wind. Caterpillars wiggling, butterflies fluttering and bees buzzing. A place where they can experience the whole life cycle of a plant from sowing seeds, to planting, harvesting and eating. Learning about compost, making and spreading and saving rain to water the plants.
The club
The first club started in April 2021 with just four children attending. The prior covid lockdowns were spent completing the skeleton of the allotment structure with help from
kind villagers wheelbarrowing mountains of manure (delivered free from generous local
Skool Beanz is a gardening club for children aged 4 – 13 years old, run from our very own no-dig allotment in Chilthorne Domer, a small village near Yeovil in South Somerset. We teach children how to grow vegetables and flowers with plenty of art and fun thrown in.
The Skool Beanz allotment - brimming with colour and buzzing with life - has been designed especially for children and includes:
• a fruit area growing raspberries, rhubarb,
gooseberries and blackcurrants
• apple, plum, pear and cherry trees
• a water station consisting of 2 x 1000 litre IBC
containers with a roof, guttering and a pipe
to collect rain water
• ‘muddy buddy’ compost heap where we
make our own compost
• a quiet wildlife garden to sit in and have our
break next to a tiny pond
• a secret den behind a bushy conifer
• work tables with umbrellas and tablecloths to
sit at and do arts and crafts
• a polytunnel to grow seedlings and used as a
cosy classroom when it rains
• small veg beds growing a selection of
seasonal veg
• a seven-metre-long flower bed so they can
pick buckets of dahlias
• raised beds - some of which are used by
villagers to grow their own.
The inspiration
The idea for Skool Beanz was ignited by climate activist Greta Thunberg and the millions of children around the world standing up for our planet in the ‘Fridays For Futures’ movement. I found them incredibly inspiring and they made me want to ‘do’ something. Politics is not my thing, but gardening is.
Previously I had worked for Charles Dowding and I will never forget the first time I set foot in his beautiful serene garden at Homeacres.
It was like entering another world. There were cabbages the size of baby elephants. Seeing
a kohlrabi for the first time blew my mind, it looked like something from out of space! From that moment on, I was hooked on growing veg.
The magic and wonder I felt that day is exactly what I wanted to recreate at Skool Beanz when I took on an allotment in my village (situated conveniently across the road from the school), to inspire and engage young gardeners of the future. Children’s gardens don’t officially exist, we have petting farms, the National Trust,
22 | Issue 1 2024 | Allotment Gardener