Future Gardeners

Dear Gardeners,

It’s a great time to sow some seeds: onions, salad onions, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beetroot, celery, peas for pods and shoots, broad beans, and herbs such as parsley, coriander and dill. Check the small print for the varietal suitability for early sowing. For example, there are cabbages for autumn which do much better from sowing in early May compared to now.

We have a packed newsletter this month. I’m delighted to invite you to attend our FREE webinar, ‘GET ON MY LAND’, being held on Friday 27th May at 10am. It will be our third Future Gardeners Forum and we have excellent panel guests to discuss how we gardeners can help access land for children to grow. More details and the sign up link are below. We will also post the webinar on my YouTube channel.

We were blown away by what Lottie has achieved and her commitment to growing, soil life and wildlife in general. Lottie’s piece below really shows how a connection with nature is so important for our younger generation. My hope is that in the future more young people will have access to land and the opportunity to learn.

Happy gardening,

Charles

How can we gardeners work with landowners and farmers to serve our youngest generation and secure regular access for them to be in nature and learn to grow?

On Friday 27 March we are hosting a special live webinar to explore exactly that.

This conversation brings together people who are already making it happen. Gardeners and farmers who have opened gates, built partnerships and created thriving spaces where children learn by growing.

Lara Honnor has spent the past five years teaching children aged four and above at the Skool Beanz children’s no dig allotment in her village. The results have been extraordinary. Confidence, curiosity and practical skill flourish when children are given their own space to sow, tend and harvest. Lara’s vision is bold and hopeful. She believes children’s learning gardens like Skool Beanz could exist all over the country, on accessible land including farms, allotments, market gardens and even National Trust and RHS sites.

Olivia Shave is a sustainability strategist, freelance journalist, former educator and heritage sheep farmer working at the intersection of agriculture, policy, and climate education. As founder of Ecoewe & Soil.Ed, she leads national advocacy to embed food, farming and sustainability into the National Curriculum, while consulting on high-impact sustainability and food-system reform. A multi award-winning Sustainability & Education Consultant and 2024 Sustainability Champion, Olivia is also a 2025 finalist for the global Agent of Change platform, recognised for her leadership in climate and education advocacy, so far making history happen in policy with a historic petition, roundtable discussion, white paper and manifesto. Rooted in lived experience as a shepherdess & textile designer, Olivia's work bridges policy, data and hands-on learning, turning complex systems into practical education that inspires reconnection to the land, food, lineage and ancestry.  Her forthcoming book (2027) explores how restoring our relationship with land and nature can become a powerful pathway for healing, resilience and systemic change.

And then there is Eddie Rixon, a forward-thinking farmer in Oxfordshire who lives by the motto Get on My Land. Eddie regularly welcomes local schools onto his 200 acre farm for full-day workshops. There is a forest art school based there and even a theatre yurt. His farm is not just a place of production but a place of learning, creativity and connection.

Charles will host and guide the discussion, drawing out practical insights and real stories from each speaker before opening the session to your questions.

If you have ever wondered how to involve children in your growing space, how to approach a landowner, or how to turn a small idea into something transformational, this webinar is for you.

We need more growers willing to share. More farmers willing to open gates. More children with their hands in the soil.

The webinar is free - sign up now and let’s start getting more children on the land.

Friday 27^th March 2026 – 10am

Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qakfrmqJTkm0rrrpapRQXg

My name is Lottie, I am nearly 9 and I have autism. I find meal times and most foods hard to manage but I do love fruit and vegetables, especially if I’ve grown them or found themforaging. I just love growing tomatoes and cucumbers they are my favourite and I don’t everremember not growing them. Knowing what’s in my food and where its come from makes me feel happy so growing vegetables is something that I love doing.

Watching tiny seeds grow into mini plants, then start growing food is so magical. I take care of my plants, watering them, weeding around them and making sure I carefully choose what grow around them is important to keep pests away. We always have plenty of nasturtiums (they taste so good too, especially the seeds!) and marigolds planted because they keep away unwanted aphids, whitefly and nematodes but also attract ladybirds, hoverflies and my favourite bees.

We plant lots of flowers because I am also a keen bee-keeper. They love to come over to help pollinate the plants and it makes me happy to see their hind legs holding heavy pollen baskets. I am digging the bees a new nature pond closer to their hives after last summer was very hot so this year they can keep cooler closer to their apiary.

Every year as well as tomatoes and cucumbers we also grow pumpkins, squashes, peas, different beans, carrots, spinach, beetroot, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants and more. A few years ago, I planted a few apple, pear and plum trees. Last year we had lots of plums, quite a few apples but still no pears. This year I am trying to grow luffas so we can use them instead of plastic sponges. I hope they grow!

I am part of a citizen science group called The Young River Guardians of the New Forest, Every other week my friends and I go to various sites across the New Forest but always concentrate on three specific areas. One is a popular tourist spot called Balmer Lawn and close by is a part of the river which flows next to sewage outlet known as Ivy Wood and the other site, Puttles Bridge, which we use as a control site. We collect samples of water and test for nitrates, phosphates and ecoli. We make sure everything is controlled and done in the parts of the river which has flowing water and our results have been very shocking. We continue to collect to compile a year long case study to present to the local water board and try to find and eliminate any sources which may be leaking into the Lymington river. In case you didn’t know, the UK Environment agency recommends that safe levels for in land bathing are to be 900 CFU (Colony Forming Units) per 100ml of water or below. Our studies have highlighted very high levels in one river case being nearly 20,000 CFU which we recorded in October 2025.

This is a poster I made for my River Guardians Group so we could raise awareness locally, I made necklaces out of sea shells, pinecones and gems to sell to raise money to buy testing equipment and did a sponsored litter pick.

I am nearly half way through my John Muir award which is a course all about nature, how to conserve it and show others how exciting it is. We have looked at so much to do with ancient trees, their biosystems and how everything is linked together underground. This has taught me an incredible amount about soil and the importance of it all. Learning about soil has helped me to understand more about gardening, especially about using the no dig method.

The soil needs to be undisturbed and roots need to be left to make connections. Now I know the importance of no dig gardening and how this makes such a huge difference to what we produce. Charles Dowding very kindly sent me my own copy of his No Dig for Children book and I have been enjoying every page and sharing it with my friends and family.

As part of my John Muir award, I have decided to start some local seed libraries, one in my village and one in another close-by village where I meet with other home educated children at a community-led family hub. Seed banks are so important to be able to keep especially wild plants and flowers in local areas growing and to give people the chance to pass seeds to each other year after year. They help reserve plant biodiversity, ensure food security, supporting agricultural resilience in the face of climate change, natural disasters, and finally human-made crises. It is also a great way to make new friends and work together as a community, keeping skills and knowledge about gardening being passed on to each generation.

I hope my seed banks will grow into something used well by local people, making connections with young and elderly. I have very generously been sent some heirloom seeds from Real Seeds, a family business we have used for our vegetables for many years, to help get the seed banks started. So thank you for sharing with me so I can share with others hopefully for many years. A little bit of kindness goes a long way.

My mum teaches me and my friends to cook with fresh fruit, vegetables and foraged plants too.

Would you like to share your experience of growing and gardening with children?

However large or small your project, we would love to hear from you.

We hope that by showing what’s possible, others will be encouraged to get started with their ideas.

Please email Nicola: [email protected]

To help with the planning of a school garden, please see this page of my website.

For a Sowing Timeline in the Northern Hemisphere, please see this page, and for the Southern Hemisphere, please click here.

For starting a new no dig allotment or garden, this is the page.

First Tunnels offer schools a 20% discount. Do see their page here, where they feature the Future Gardeners Forum!

We would like this resource list to grow and turn into a toolkit to help set up and run a successful growing space for children, so if you have any resources you think would be helpful, please email Anna, [email protected]

Below are the contact details for the Future Gardeners Forum speakers, 2024 and 2025. Do follow along with their projects via Instagram or their websites.

Alby Jones, @nodigkid

Beth Rochford, @rootzup

Karen Waterston, @thegardenofideas

Helen Cross, @grow_cook_inspire

Tom Houghton, @thecommunitygrowers_cic, @thebostonmarketgarden

Hannah and Ross, @lettinggrow

Lara Honnor – Skool Beanz 
@skoolbeanz

Jess Creasey – Cornwall Grows CIC 
@cornwallgrows

Phil Brown – Headteacher, Bottesford Junior School 
Website: https://www.bottesfordjuniors.com/school-garden/

Sarah Alun-Jones - GROW
@wearegrow
https://www.wearegrow.org

Dan Romans-Hay – Woody School Farm, Streatham
@woodyschoolfarm
[email protected]

Matt Willer – The Papillon Project
@thepapillonproject
https://www.thepapillonproject.com