Arnhall Day Nursery

Winner: Best Garden Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology Theme

The Living Garden, hosted by the Garden for Life Forum promotes wildlife friendly gardening. Schools were invited to design a small garden including celebrating the 2017 year of History, Heritage and Archaeology. This design blends archaeology and modern picnic, using old objects as planters for food plants. Some objects are converted into bug hotels.

Plants in reused jars and tins

Interesting found objects

Nursery logo painted on the back

Every garden tells a story about the people who helped make it, the challenges faced, solutions found, lessons learned and the unexpected pleasures along the way. Here is Arnhall Day Nursery’s Pocket Garden Story in their own words:

Whilst the children were digging during forest schools outside of the nursery they came across an interesting object. Their curiosity then led to them doing more digging over the next few weeks and finding more objects.

The children have enjoyed constructing our Pocket Garden using all of the objects that they dug up.

We have added height to some parts of it using the slates. The children have looked around the nursery garden sourcing natural materials for the bug hotel.

A lot of parents were very kind and handed in packets of seeds from our list and even donated seeds that were not on our list that we could use in the nursery garden.

A few of our parents planted seeds at home too and kept us updated on their progress before bringing them in.

Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology logo made out of lolly sticks

Filling a box with soil

Planting in reused containers

Washing out a planter