Nursery Food: Gardening - Dig it!

No wonder many children love gardening - there is the fun of digging in the dirt combined with finding interesting creatures, plus the magic of tending to and watching plants grow. Ultimately, there is the satisfaction of harvesting and actually eating their produce.

Growing a range of vegetables, fruits and herbs is a fantastic way to link children's experiences with all areas of the curriculum, from discussing healthy eating to problem solving, environmental awareness and developing physical skills.

Many practitioners find that even the fussiest of eaters will sample food that they have grown themselves - experiencing the sensory excitement of watching it change and develop, feeling the textures of the leaves and the smell of the fresh produce.

GETTING STARTED

The idea of gardening can be daunting, but those who have made a success of it in their settings say that the hardest part is getting started. 'But,' says Marjorie Chapple, pre-school room leader at Unitots, University of Worcester, 'everyone can read a packet of seeds or pick up a book. Anyone should be able to do it.'

At Bosco Centre Nursery in Rotherhithe, London, the staff started on a small scale with a 'growing table' in their pre-school room. On this, they grew packets of supermarket seeds in trays and recycled yoghurt pots. This sparked the children's and staff interest and now they have a growing area in the nursery garden.

Nursery practitioner Chantel Joseph says, 'The pre-school children are very protective of their growing area and show a real ownership of the space. They learn to take responsibility for what they're growing and have to remember to water the plants. Through gardening, they learn the passage of time, see change and growth and also witness decay.'

The staff search the internet for help and ideas. 'Seeds are cheap. We even buy them from pound shops, and parents bring in things to plant, such as potatoes, spring onions, carrots and peas,' says Ms Joseph. 'We try to link the gardening to healthy eating as much as possible and often try out different things from the fruit we've eaten, such as planting dried mango seeds. Not everything has worked but we've tried.'

GROW YOUR OWN

Childminder Michelle Thompson in Corby, Northamptonshire, started growing fruit and vegetables to show the children where their food comes from, rather than it just being bought at a supermarket. They can compare the fresh produce to processed foods.

'We've got rhubarb growing permanently in the garden and also chives, thyme, rosemary and bay trees. In previous years we've grown courgettes, carrots, onions, beetroot and tomatoes. I research online and grow things that are simple for the children and produce quick, visible results,' she says. 'We pick what we have grown and use it to bake cakes or make meals.'

LIFE CYCLES

When Ofsted graded Meadows Day Nursery in Cheltenham outstanding in 2011 the inspector left it a challenge - to grow things with a view to eating them. The nursery now has strawberries, lavender, tomatoes, herbs, sunflowers, carrots and many other vegetables, all being successfully tended by the children.

Green-fingered parents and grandparents help out and the nursery children enjoy visiting the neighbouring garden centre for inspiration and advice.

Nursery manager Breda Howard says, 'We have a large garden area, so were able to choose suitable areas for growing, and we're guided by the children on what to grow. It can be very physical with the digging and sweeping. The children learn about teamwork, their environment, and the weather and its effects.'

Plants failing can also be a rich learning experience. Unitots' Marjorie Chapple explains, 'Children learn that gardening does not end in success of the time. We had a pumpkin that the slugs got underneath and munched their way through. Growing is not the end product of the exercise.

We think it is important to have a go and if it fails then it doesn't matter. It's part of life and encourages problem solving and critical thinking to consider doing it another way.'

SPACE SAVERS

Children attending settings with limited outdoor space needn't miss out on the experience of growing their own crops. Zeeba Daycare in Deptford, London, is located at the bottom of a tower block. Its outdoor area comprises of wooden decking with fake grass, but the children grow seeds in trays indoors and then transfer them to tubs outside.

'It's just a case of thinking how best to manage the space,' says manager Liesl Hewitt. 'Beanstalks have been a success because they quickly grow tall. The children love seeing the growing process. They also enjoy growing herbs because they go out with the nursery chef to smell, taste and cut them to use in our cooking.'

Two years ago, Beechdale Nursery School in Consett, County Durham, got Lottery funding to build an allotment on disused land at the adjoining junior school. Now, once a week, the children have gardening sessions, with around 12 children visiting the allotment at a time.

Assistant head Gemma Edwards says it is regarded as a special place. 'The children enjoy the freedom on the allotment and staff also get a lot from it. They are working with smaller groups of children, listening, exploring and playing together.'

The annual frustration for the nursery school is that one class of children plant everything and move on to school before it blossoms, leaving it to be harvested by the new intake. 'We now try to have a balance and also grow things that have shorter growing cycles so that children can see all the stages,' says Ms Edwards.

She warns that the allotment is a big commitment, with staff having to keep a daily watering rota during school holidays, but adds, 'It's worth all the hard work because it encompasses all the nursery curriculum. We can see that the children get so much out of it, from picking the produce and cooking with it to finding worms. Worms are the biggest hit ever!'

MORE INFORMATION

• Royal Horticultural Society has children's activities, www.rhs.org.uk

• Waitrose Garden, tips for small gardens, www.waitrosegarden.com

• Woodland Trust's Nature Detectives, seasonal activities and recipes: www.naturedetectives.org.uk

• Little Green Fingers, tips for pre-school children, www.littlegreenfingers.com

• The Playground Potting Shed by Dominic Murphy

• Gardening With Children by Kim Wilde

GARDENING: TOP TIPS

• Easy crops with short growing seasons include lettuce, radishes, sunflowers (choose 'confectionery' sunflowers and roast the seeds for snacks), snow peas, cherry tomatoes, nasturtiums (the petals are edible), carrots, potatoes and pumpkins.

• Avoid plastic gardening tools, which can be inefficient and break easily. Instead, buy child-sized metal tools, or shorten the wooden handle on items such as hoes and spades. Buy a water spray for watering fledgling plants so children don't drown them with a watering can.

• Some children will not like getting dirty - some parents will not appreciate this either - so ask parents to provide old clothing and wellies or invest in overalls or waterproofs.

• Get children involved in composting nursery food waste to use on the soil.

• Grow plants to attract the wildlife - for example, wildflowers and buddleia will attract bees and butterflies. These will pollinate your flowers, which helps get a good crop of fruit and vegetables.

• Use magnifying glasses and bug catchers to find creatures that are good or bad for your garden - worms are good because they make holes in the soil for air and water to get in, whereas greenfly will eat your plants (although ladybirds will eat them!).

• Do growing experiments: use food colouring in water to change the colour of petals; grow beans in see-through containers to see the sprouts, roots and shoots; try growing plants from different foods (for example, rice, pasta, lentils, carrot tops) to see what does and doesn't grow.

• Deliberately leave some of your produce to dry out and go to seed so that children can see the full cycle - that fruit is the plant's way of dispersing its seed - and grow the following year. Also plant fruit stones and seeds.

• If outdoor space is limited or unsuitable, think creatively - use sunny windowsills, buy hanging baskets, put tubs or growbags on playgrounds and recycle materials such as old tyres and food containers.