Summerside Kindergarten

The Stickman Garden

This is the story of Stickman, which was chosen by the children at the nursery.  Designing the garden inspired their own Stickman story about a boat and a giant potato!  The story has been written up and can be seen below along with lots of images of our garden coming to life. 

Tasty veg growing

Colourful bird houses

Tending the garden

The children chose this story as it is one of their favourites alongside other Julia Donaldson tales, they like the nature theme.  The garden is wildlife friendly; it has been built on the nursery allotment which is already home to a large number of birds, insects and other animals.  The garden contains a number of trees and flowers which are good for pollinators, and there are mini nesting boxes hanging on Stickman's tree.  The soil is rich and contains our own compost.  The garden contains many edible plants-it has traditional veg and fruit such as leeks, spring onions, strawberries, pea plants, broad beans, lettuces and chard.  It also contains some cross over plants which are both edible and wildlife friendly such as chives, lavender and nasturtiums.  At Summerside we are all good gardeners, and the children of all ages visit our large allotment each week. 

I think the best thing we have learnt is that we can build a garden which is not just functional but is also great fun to play with.  Children of all ages love the garden as you can see from the photos.  We have also learnt that we hardly needed to buy anything, which is a great lesson. The only things we bought were the bird houses and the birds, everything else was found or re-used.

We will be linking with Warriston Allotment association to tell them about the garden which will be posted on their website. Parents will also see the garden on our 2 allotment open days. 

The garden is built in an old raised bed at the allotment and will continue to grow through the year which is exciting, already one of the pea plants is growing round Stickman's tree!

We have enjoyed making the garden so much and will be writing to Julia Donaldson to tell her about it.

Painting bird houses

Stickman goes in!

Monitoring progres

The Children's story: Stickman, the boat and the giant potato

Stickman planted a big potato. He also had a blue boat. He went to the North Pole. Stickman ate his big potato. It filled his tummy up! Stickman sank because he fell out of the boat. He couldn’t float in the deep sea. A shark and a whale rescued him, and then an aeroplane came. Stickman went in the aeroplane. A dolphin splashed the aeroplane windows. The aeroplane fell because the driver couldn’t see. They crashed onto a beach – they didn’t know where they were. Then a mole came, and they all saw the mole, who said ‘Hello and Welcome.’ They ate lots of potatoes and everyone was ok.

Stickman characters

Stickman family

Time with the garden

Garden Design