Our Allotment is open! Our tiny gardeners have been busy getting their little hands dirty in the name of growth and adventure, with the promise of yummy fruit and vegetables.
This marks the third year of running our nursery allotment and accepting generous plant donations from Blaise Nursery Bristol in partnership with Bristol City Council. We are incredibly proud of how far we have come – from recycling boxes of soil to thriving beds of vegetables, fruit and herbs! This Summer, we are very excited to put our learnings into practice for our best year yet.
Allotment preparation – a fresh start
It was a long, wet winter, so last year’s growing space has been in need of some love. Staff and children at the Southville Centre got to work preparing planters ready for the seedlings delivery and gave our 2025 Allotment space a new lease of life.
Before
After
One of the most rewarding parts of setting up the Allotment has been watching how much the children love getting involved – from the very first dig to the final harvest. Our mini gardeners have amazed us with their curiosity and desire to get stuck in with digging, planting and observing changes from day to day.
Why are we so passionate about our Allotment?
Creating this space for our children provides so much more than simply a place to grow plants. Our little ones develop key skills such as team work, confidence and taking responsibility as well as learning to understand the world better. The Allotment offers opportunities to learn in lots of different ways. When we measure how our plants have grown, we develop maths and language skills. When we dig, prune and water, our gross and fine motor skills are nurtured. We also love the vast wellbeing benefits gardening offers too, for example:
- Mindfulness: Gardening encourages children to slow down and be present.
- Stress reduction: Being outdoors and engaging with nature has calming effects for our little ones. Simply putting our hands into soil has benefits alone!
- Sense of achievement: Watching something grow from their own effort is deeply rewarding.
- Connection to nature: Spending time outdoors builds empathy and a sense of belonging in the natural world.
Taking our learning beyond the Allotment
Setting up our Allotment has inspired our children to notice nature more. Raleigh Room children have been following their interest with lots of learning outdoors – they created a bug hotel for the garden, went on a minibeast hunt, planted some sunflowers and then measured theme creating a graph.
Join the fun
Are you fascinated by nature too? Check out the Festival of Nature which is running until 15th June across Bristol and Bath. They have curated in-person and online events for all ages, with film screenings, guest appearances, arts and crafts, experiments, screenings, walks, talks, tours, exhibitions, music and more.
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