Home Education and Gardening*

We had an allotment garden from when the children were aged 2 and 4 through to about 8 and 10. It was in Chesham, where we used to live. It was fortuitously located next to a children's park and was surrounded by natural springs and streams. There were also many trees, mostly weeping willows, damson and apple trees. We built a small shed on the allotment and kept our tools in there and also used it to huddle in if it showered with rain.

We used to spend each Saturday down there, with another family. On arriving, all the children would run off and play, climb trees, wade through the springs, catch frogs, chase ducks etc whilst the adults worked. They had much more freedom than in their own gardens but were always within hailing distance of an adult.

After a few hours of this, they'd come into our allotment plot to check what we adults were doing. When we weren't sitting eating sandwiches and drinking tea from thermos flasks, we were digging, weeding, sowing etc. The kids would ask to help us. Their involvement was of various degrees of actual helpfulness, but always encouraged. Their favourite activities seemed to be:
digging and finding worms (younger boys),
transferring manure from the pile at one end of the allotments to our plot (older boys),
sowing (younger girls)
and harvesting (all).
Our best memories were of the harvest. Straight from plant to mouth usually, especially with the strawberries! We'd take camping stoves down there and boil up some water and dump freshly picked corn in the pot for a couple of minutes and the kids would run off with their hot, fresh cobs to climb up a tree and eat them.

Of course, they learned things from the gardening, things to do with the seasons and the inter-relation of plants and animals, the cycle of birth, death, re-growth etc. But they learned even more from the freedom to explore, the animals they saw (herons, grass-snakes etc) and the games they invented. And, crucially, that there was a relationship between their efforts at the beginning of the season and the size of the harvest at the end. A lesson for life, if ever there was one!{g}

Now, we have a tiny garden which, being cold and dark, doesn't encourage gardening and no time for an allotment any more. So, I'm very glad that the children had that opportunity when they were young.

*I wrote this article for something else and thought I'd just pop it on here too.