Future Gardeners

Dear Gardeners,

I have been hoping to chair a seminar about children in garden and farm at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. It would have been with Lara Honnor and other gardeners and farmers who are working to bring children into contact with food plants and soil on their holdings. Then we heard just yesterday that the ORFC has rejected this proposal. Lara explains this in more detail at the end of this newsletter.

I'm sad that a farming conference cannot accommodate children’s land-based initiatives. We shall do something independently and share details soon.

Now is the ideal time to plant cloves of garlic. It's fine to use your own harvest for replanting, but plant only the larger cloves, and eat the smaller ones. An ideal time is the first few days of this month, when the moon is waxing strongly, which contributes to stronger growth through the months ahead. This Friday is the day I have assigned for garlic planting. It may be raining, but with no dig, the compost surface is not sticky. Later in October it's also good, if you can't find time this coming week.

I keep the garden full through October, and have been busy sowing cover crops of white mustard, because it grows really quickly and is then killed by frost. You leave it where it falls, as an addition of organic matter to your beds. I notice how earthworms come up and drag the stems into their burrows. Through spring, you can see small circles of stems on the surface as they are pulled towards different worm burrows.

I’ve had a busy month at Homeacres, with trips abroad and lots of visitors here. In the photo I’m with the Roots team, who run no dig allotments all around the country. They make it possible for those without gardens to grow their own veg, and that creates a strong community at the same time. Growing in any sort of communal way is so beneficial for everyone.

In our newsletter this month, Joanne talks us through her school garden and how the whole school community get involved. I congratulate her on a wonderful garden and the beneficial experience for all involved.

Happy gardening,

Charles

In last month’s newsletter, we ran a competition to win a 2026 Sowing Calendar by sending in a photo of your finest harvest of 2025… so far!

We were sent some wonderful photos of vegetable abundance - here are the five winning entries.

We are a primary school gardening club based at Trawden Forest Primary School in Lancashire. I took over the running of the club in January 2024, inheriting a small space with a few pallet planters - all in need of attention!

Since then, with determination, fundraising, and a lot of hard work, we've transformed our growing area into a vibrant, productive and beautiful garden that the children, the school and I are all incredibly proud of. This space is now more than just a garden - it's a living classroom, a calm corner of nature, and a place where learning truly comes to life.  

Let us take you on our gardening journey - where it all began and what we are doing now.

Our first priority was to clear the old planters and rebuild replacement raised beds using 'seconds' decking boards, which kept the cost down. As soon as the planters were built, the children were able to start planting!

Over the past year, we've made further improvements to the infrastructure of our garden. A potting shed was built, and we linked two IBC containers via guttering to harvest rainwater, helping us make the most of natural resources.

As our garden area has poorly drained soil, additional raised beds were created around our small orchard, expanding our growing space at the rear of the polytunnel. All raised beds are no-dig and follow a hugelkultur-inspired method, enriching the soil and supporting the long-term sustainability of the garden. 

During February Half Term, we built our composting bays, and they are now well and truly up and running. As well as composting all our garden waste, the children collect fruit and vegetable snack waste from break time across the whole school, which is added daily to the bays. This has significantly reduced the amount of waste we send to landfill.

The children understand how composting works, including the importance of layering greens and browns, and they recently turned the first full bay into the second.

We also set up a worm farm, which the children are learning to manage as part of their introduction to vermicomposting. Some snack waste and garden waste go in there too. To the children's delight, we have found out that the worms love chopped-up banana!

In our 'Wild Bed', the children grow comfrey, which we turn into our own 'Pongy Potion' organic fertiliser to use on our crops. Our young gardeners take great delight in showing the Pongy Potion Bins to any visitors to our garden!

All of our fruit and vegetables are grown from seed - and wherever possible, seed we've saved ourselves. Our marigolds and nasturtiums, for example, were grown from seeds the children collected and saved last year. They understand the principles of companion planting and know these flowers help to deter pests, acting as natural trap plants. We even had some nasturtium flowers and leaves in our salad! 

We use succession planting to keep our beds productive throughout the year. Fast-growing crops like radishes, lettuce and spring onions are sown regularly to quickly fill in gaps after other vegetables are harvested. We've succession-sown peas and grown first earlies, second earlies, and main crop potatoes.

As well as this, the whole school took part in a potato growing competition, with each class chitting, planting and caring for their very own ‘Tub of Spuds’ – a fun and friendly challenge that inspired and got everyone talking about growing!

We are now growing potatoes especially for our school Christmas dinner, along with Brussels sprouts and carrots for Santa's reindeer!

We grow a wide variety of fruit and vegetables with the focus on introducing the children to new and unusual varieties. So far, we've grown purple podded peas, rainbow radish, a colourful selection of tomatoes, and purple potatoes. This year, we planted three different varieties of corn, including Indian corn, which we hope to harvest for popping our own popcorn!

The children have also planted yellow and green courgettes, peppers, spinach, kale, garlic, rhubarb, patty pans, tromboncino squash, cucumbers, aubergines and butternut squash. Fruits include strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, melons, watermelon, figs, grapes, and even peaches. We're growing root vegetables such as beetroot, carrots, turnips, sweet potatoes, red and yellow onions and leeks, along with broad beans, purple dwarf beans, runner beans, and several varieties of lettuce.

We are always up for a challenge - this year, we're growing a luffa vine and a birdhouse gourd in the hope of making our own natural birdhouse!

Our polytunnel is a growing paradise, where every inch of space is used to its full potential. We grow vertically to maximise the area, training cucumbers, gourds, melons and climbing vines up trellises and supports. The result is a lush, productive space that feels alive with growth. The children affectionately call it "entering the jungle" - and it really is, a jungle of learning, exploration and wonder.

The crops grown in our school garden are enjoyed in a variety of ways. Some are shared fresh with the children at break times; they've just had a delicious batch of mini munch cucumbers! Others, like potatoes, strawberries, and salad crops, are sent to the school kitchen and served at lunchtime for the whole school. Pot to Plate in action! In Gardening Club, we also love to cook outdoors using what we've grown. We've sautéed potatoes with our garlic, made peach ice cream, stewed rhubarb, made beetroot and chocolate muffins, pizzas and hearty soups - all inspired by the garden. Any surplus is sold by the children in their 'pop-up shop' - money raised helps towards improving our gardening resources.

We're also growing pumpkins - both Jack O' Lantern and Jill Be Little varieties. The children are excited to harvest them in autumn to decorate our school library. It's a wonderful way to celebrate the seasons and see the full growing cycle from seed to display!

Our wildlife and pollinator garden has been extended this year to run the full length of the hedge. It's planted with spring bulbs and a wide variety of herbaceous perennials to provide colour and nectar across the seasons. We've created a welcoming habitat for insects and wildlife by building a bug hotel from recycled pallets and materials, adding log piles, bee houses for solitary bees, a ladybird house and even a water station for thirsty pollinators. 

And not forgetting the often-overlooked night-time pollinators, we've created a Moon Garden filled with white and pale coloured flowers and plants with silvery foliage. It comes to life at dusk, supporting moths and other nocturnal visitors while adding a touch of evening magic to our garden!

This year, we are putting a huge emphasis on enhancing our garden for local wildlife. We've added bird boxes to the trees and are working with our local Men's Shed group, who are kindly building hedgehog houses for us. We're excited to have bats in the area too, so bat boxes are next on our list. Looking ahead, we're currently raising funds to create a wildlife pond - another step in making our garden a thriving habitat for nature.

Our school gardening club also grows plants for 'Trawden in Bloom', contributing to the wider Britain in Bloom community gardening programme. From seed, we've grown violas, polyanthus, cosmos and marigolds for the welcome planter at the entrance to our village. We've also raised wildflower varieties such as field scabious, cornflowers and ox-eye daisies to support the local wildflower garden - helping to make our whole village bloom!

Our school garden has become so much more than just a place to grow fruit and vegetables - it's a space that brings our whole school community together. From tiny seedlings to harvest celebrations, it's a source of pride, excitement and joy for the children. They love being part of every stage, whether it's planting, watering, harvesting, or sharing what they've grown.

The garden has given our children a hands-on way to connect with nature, learn valuable life skills, and grow in confidence. It has truly transformed our outdoor space - and our school - for the better.

Each year in January, the Oxford Real Farming Conference takes place over a few days, connecting farmers, growers, activists, policymakers and researchers from around the world who are interested in transforming our food system. It is an inspiring event with over 150 talks, panel discussions and workshops that give me lots of ideas and above all hope for the growing year ahead. But the one thing missing are any talks on how we can engage young children in farming and growing. There is FLAME, the wonderful Land Workers ’ Alliance youth group - a new, dynamic grassroots movement for food justice orchestrated by young people aged 16-30, but what about younger children?

Discussing this with Charles, we thought it would be a good idea to submit a talk for January 2026 titled ‘Inspiring and Enabling the Youngest Generation’, a panel discussion hosted by Charles, who is clearly passionate about growing with children after starting The Future Gardeners Forum and this newsletter, linking children's gardening projects around the world and facilitating his yearly live webinar with children's gardening educators.

The panellists would be:

Eddie Rixon, a forward-thinking farmer in Oxfordshire who lives by the slogan "Get on my Land!" He welcomes local schools in his community to his 200-acre Lopemede Farm regularly and hosts full-day educational workshops for them. There is also a forest art school based at his farm and a theatre yurt.

Olivia Shave of ECOEWE Consulting. Her background is in farming, and she describes herself as a disruptor, storyteller, rural advocate and agent of change. She started the hugely important campaign to embed food and farming, and sustainability education into the UK's national curriculum.

Lara Honnor (me!), founder of Skool Beanz CIC, a gardening club for children aged 4-13, run from our very own children’s allotment for the past 5 years, delivering after-school, weekend and holiday clubs throughout the year to great success. This gardening club shows the potential of children’s gardens and clubs being created on pockets of land made available at market gardens, farms and allotments.

Now more than ever, we need to focus on our children. There is so much valuable knowledge our farmers and growers have that must be shared and passed on from as early an age as possible. Children of primary school age are at that magical time in their lives, thirsty for knowledge and fascinated by nature and we need to find a way for more schools and children to have regular access to working market gardens and farms in their communities, throughout the seasons, to give them a greater understanding of where food comes from and a deeper connection to nature, also to show them that there are a range of careers in growing veg and farming. There are nine precious years of learning from the age of 4-13 that can be nurtured, laying the foundation to be the growers and farmers of the future.

This is about children, education, and the legacy we experienced growers must leave for future generations.

We got really excited to submit this talk and waited with anticipation to see if it was successful. The months went by, and yesterday we received the email with the generic message sent to all unsuccessful applicants, thanking us but informing us that they

“…receive on average 450 sessions a year and only approximately 150 are selected for the conference…The conference will have a vast array of topics covered, including sessions dealing with similar topics to yours...”

Considering there have been no talks about engaging children in the past, it will be interesting to see what they plan to show. I felt sad and deflated yesterday. But today we get back up and we keep doing what we’re doing. Gardening with children is so important. We know that. It just takes a bit more time to get others to understand that too.

FLAME https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/flame-youth-landworkers/

@lopemede_farm www.lopemedefarm.co.uk

@ecoewe

Campaign to embed food and farming into the curriculum: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700029

@skoolbeanz www.skoolbeanzcic.com

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