Educational Visits

We offer a wide range of garden sessions and workshops for schools and community groups. What we offer changes with the seasons and we welcome groups of all ages and abilities. Some of the subjects we cover are: urban habitats, lifecycles, plant structure, mini-beasts, climate change, and pond life.

Environmental Education in 2018 included a series of Horticultural Skills Workshops for Adults as well as an expansion of our work with Primary Schools. We provided structured activities in the Garden for 28 classes and enabled both Vittoria and Thornhill Primary to use the Garden as an outdoor classroom for their own curriculum requirements. The Family School (who work with excluded primary-aged children and their families) now visit on an almost daily basis with their young students to explore seasonal changes, hunt for bugs, and benefit from the calm environment we have created. Three local nurseries bring their children to visit on an ad-hoc basis.

We also run a range of arts and creative workshops which help participants learn about plants and wildlife through drawing and observation. We have a ‘Dry Garden’, acid bed, winter garden, rose pergola, and wildlife area and are happy to talk about planting ideas.

This is an example of a lifecycle session we offer:

The Lifecycle of Amphibians

Begins with supervised pond dipping (weather and seasonally dependent – frogs, toads and newts should be active from March onwards).

A tank is then provided for closer inspection. We explain a frog’s lifecycle and then students are asked to draw/copy the 4 stages. This can also be run alongside a mini-beast hunt where students seek out the different species which live in the garden.