RHS Campaign For School Gardens, Chatsworth Flower Show

Mayflower Primary School’s sensory garden, It All Makes Sense, was one of my favourite corners of the Chatsworth Flower Show 2019. If there’s a child in your life, you might like to take some inspiration from these recycled tin cans, painted with cheerful motifs. Pop a herb or a flower in one and you have a tiny garden to enjoy, with potential lessons in art, the environment, nature, nurturing and cookery along the way.

Tin can planter with a smile

Tin can plant pot

Butterfly, sun and flower designs

While my secondary school had a small greenhouse, I only have the vaguest memories of going inside it. We never did anything as exciting as making a garden for one of the RHS flower shows. I love it when I see some of the kids who have been involved at the shows, proud of what they’ve achieved and excited to explain to visitors what they were thinking about in this or that part of the garden.

I’m one of the lucky ones. Although my schooldays preceded the RHS Campaign For School Gardens by decades, my childhood was filled with small lessons like these as part of family life. Caterpillars in jars that turned into butterflies. Rose petal scented water. A succulent that grew in a pattern. Owl pellets to pull apart, looking for bones. Flowers to plant. Potatoes to dig (well before their time as we were too excited to wait). Pebbles to pick out of streams. A bat cave to explore.

For a few years I had a sycamore tree I grew from seed and was gutted when Dad said it was getting too big for us to keep and needed to be planted somewhere.

I see that now as a grown up, but didn’t see it at all as a child. I was invested in that little tree. Some of nature’s lessons are far reaching, such as the need to let go and the desirability of not sulking about it.

Recycled insect

Butterfly with heart wings

The schools section of the Chatsworth Flower Show served as a great advert for the RHS’s campaign and although I’ve picked this particular one to write about, every school garden was thoughtful, creative and just as worthy of its week in the spotlight.

Local primary schools and conservation/wildlife clubs for children up to age 11 were encouraged to take part. Designs featured plants with sensory properties, at least some of which had to be grown by the children, together with ‘tasteful props’. If visiting home gardens in the UK and USA has taught me anything, it is that ‘tasteful’ comes in a whole range of visual colours and flavours. At the RHS shows, for example, gnomes generally fall under a blanket ban from gardens created by grown ups. Kids might get more leeway, but a wise teacher would phone to check before pushing too many boundaries.

Plastic insects and fish clearly pass muster, but after all, who could claim these ones were anything other than tasteful?

The schools were challenged to show their creativity by using objects they wouldn’t usually think to use in a garden, especially upcycled ones, and to talk about how they could help the environment by giving something a new life instead of sending it to landfill.

Each school had found imaginative ways to appeal to all five senses. Hearing, for example, was represented by dangling shakers made from bottles, straws and caps and filled with small stones or beans. An abundance of blue bottle caps had been repurposed as mulch, representing a river.

My sweetheart loved the simplicity of the water feature. Visitors were encouraged to scoop up the water from the trough below and pour it into the barrel, then spend a few relaxing moments watching the water stream in slim jets from holes in its sides. Messages on the container reminded children and adults alike about the value of water and our need to treat it respectfully.

Someone – make that many someones – had lavished time and care on these gardens, but my goodness, was it worth it! I’m a living example of how lives are made richer by simple lessons like these.