Children's Gardening
BWGC is a gardening club for anyone with a passion for gardening, regardless of experience. Whether you’re five or fifteen, young gardeners and families are always welcomed and it is wonderful to see children and young people getting engaged with gardening and the outdoors.
Gardening helps boost children’s well-being by reducing stress, encouraging outdoor play, and building confidence through caring for living things. Sometimes it can feel daunting to find a way of engaging children with gardening. Here are a few ideas of gardening activities to do with children, throughout the seasons.
January: Window-Sill Starts & Seed Planning
While outside is cold, build excitement indoors.
- Sow & Plant: Sow cress, mustard, and pea shoots on wet kitchen roll or in shallow trays on a sunny windowsill for rapid 7-day harvests.
- Child-Friendly Task: Cut out picture clippings from seed catalogues to make a collage map of their plot.
- Activity: Stand first-early seed potatoes upright in egg cartons in a cool, light room to start “chitting” (sprouting green shoots).
February: Cardboard Tube Sowing
- Sow & Plant: Sow broad beans into small pots and early peas into recycled cardboard toilet roll tubes indoors or in an unheated greenhouse.
- Child-Friendly Task: Paint wooden spoons or smooth beach pebbles to use as colourful crop markers.
- Activity: Build a bug hotel out of old wooden crates, pinecones, bamboo canes, and dry leaves.
March: The “Spud Hunt” Begins
As the soil begins to warm up, outdoor work begins.
- Sow & Plant: Plant first-early seed potatoes outdoors in trenches or grow bags. Direct-sow radishes (‘French Breakfast’) and early carrots (‘Nantes’).
- Child-Friendly Task: Use a dibber or stick to poke evenly spaced holes in the soil for radish seeds.
- Activity: Drop seed potatoes into grow bags and cover them with compost.
April: Giant Seeds & Structure Building
- Sow & Plant: Sow giant sunflower seeds, courgettes, pumpkins, and sweetcorn in small pots indoors or in a greenhouse. Direct-sow sugar snap peas and onion sets outdoors.
- Child-Friendly Task: Push onion sets (tiny bulbs) root-side down into soft, raked soil. Onion sets are available from the BWGC Allotment Shop.
- Activity: Build hazel cane wigwams for climbing beans and sweet peas.
May: Frost-Free Planting Out
After the last spring frosts (usually early to mid May in Bishop’s Waltham), tender crops can be moved outside.
- Sow & Plant: Plant out courgettes, pumpkins, tomatoes, and runner beans. Direct-sow nasturtiums and marigolds around crop borders.
- Child-Friendly Task: Water new transplants using mini watering cans.
- Activity: Go on “Slug Patrol” around brassicas and young leafy greens, moving slugs away to the allotment compost heap.
June: Snack Harvests & Water Brigades
- Sow & Plant: Succession-sow salad leaves, radishes, and dwarf French beans every 2–3 weeks to avoid harvest gaps.
- Child-Friendly Task: Pick and eat strawberries, sugar snap peas, and radishes fresh off the plant.
- Activity: Set up a mud kitchen corner using old pots and utensils, water and pulled weeds.
July: The Great Potato Dig
- Sow & Plant: Fast-growing salads, spring onions, and late-crop beetroots.
- Child-Friendly Task: Pick courgettes daily before they turn into overgrown marrows.
- Activity: Tip over potato grow bags or fork up potato beds to search for buried tubers like hidden treasure. Look at the BWGC annual show children’s categories to see if your child would like to enter any and win a prize!
August: Summer Abundance
Peak harvest month across the plot.
- Sow & Plant: Overwintering salads (land cress, winter lettuce, and spinach).
- Child-Friendly Task: Harvest cherry tomatoes, sweetcorn, and runner beans.
- Activity: Save seeds from dried flower heads (like marigolds and poppies) into paper envelopes for next year.
September: Pumpkin Patch Check
- Sow & Plant: Plant autumn garlic cloves and overwintering onion sets.
- Child-Friendly Task: Turn pumpkins on the plot so their undersides dry in the autumn sun.
- Activity: Measure and record the height of mature sunflowers before harvesting their seed heads for wild birds.
October: Spooky Harvests & Leaf Piles
- Sow & Plant: Sow hardy broad beans outdoors for an extra-early spring crop next year.
- Child-Friendly Task: Harvest pumpkins and winter squashes before the first hard autumn frost.
- Activity: Rake fallen autumn leaves into large piles to build a leaf-mould bin (and jump in the dry leaf heaps beforehand).
November: Feeding Allotment Wildlife
- Sow & Plant: Plant bare-root fruit bushes (gooseberries, raspberries, and currants) if the soil is workable and not frozen.
- Child-Friendly Task: Spread straw or well-rotted manure over empty beds to “put the soil to bed” for winter.
- Activity: Make pinecone lard-and-seed bird feeders to hang on fruit trees around the plot.
December: Winter Rest
- Sow & Plant: No outdoor sowing. Focus on maintenance and fruit pruning.
- Child-Friendly Task: Harvest fresh winter leeks and parsnips for Christmas soup or roast dinners.
- Activity: Force daffodil or hyacinth bulbs indoors in a glass jar of pebbles, gravel or marbles (being aware of choking hazards for younger children), keeping the water level with the very bottom edge of the bulbs, and watch the roots reach down to drink. Place jars on a cool, bright windowsill.
