Pocket Garden
Pocket Garden
Pocket Garden
The 2025 Pocket Garden Design Competition is open!
This competition links garden design, sustainability and our heritage, from physical objects to well loved tunes or traditions that have been handed on across generations.
Schools with winning designs grow and build their garden and then film or photograph it to be displayed in our online interactive showcase garden. The public and schools across Scotland then visit the showcase to vote for their 3 favourite gardens.
Download the 2025 Pocket Garden Competition Guide
Any questions? Email pocketgarden@keepscotlandbeautiful.org
Pocket Garden 2025 twilight – Wed 22 January 16.00
An introduction to this popular competition with inspiration for your pupils' design ideas on 'Our Heritage', that is the new theme for 2025. Hear about the support available from Pocket Garden mentors and how schools that have taken part before used Pocket Garden as a framework for learning, linking to their community, other whole school awards, developing their school grounds and Learning for Sustainablity. Suitable for educators from all sectors.
What is a Pocket Garden?
A Pocket Garden is a miniature garden that uses edible plants, plants that attract wildlife, and that reuses something which would otherwise have been thrown away.
Each year, we invite young people from schools across Scotland to send in their designs for a colourful and exciting environmentally friendly, pocket-sized garden. Pupils who send in the winning designs are then invited to build and grow their gardens to display. You can find out more about last years' competition by downloading the Pocket Garden 2024 Brochure.
Scotland's Chief Medical Officer recognised the health benefits of taking part in Pocket Garden in his Annual Report 2023 -2024. He said it, "connects children with their food and with nature."
Previously, Pocket Gardens have been displayed at Gardening Scotland in Edinburgh, where they have been visited by the BBC Beechgrove Garden team, the Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform and the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. You can see this years' winning designs transformed into fabulous gardens in our online Pocket Garden 2024 showcase.
To support you to plan a garden that will be looking it's best in early June, here's a downloadable .pdf with top tips for planning and getting growing.
Growing and harvesting can include digging, but here we invite you to a different kind of dig – into our cultural past! This resource booklet introduces some of the cultural heritage, traditions, folklore, custom and crafts associated with harvest and the growing year in Scotland.
Have a look at stories from previous years for ideas and inspiration. The children’s designs are often playful, informal, celebratory and full of clever surprises and innovative ideas.
Here is some further information to engage and inspire your pupils. Nature is amazing!
Have a look at the design brochure for instructions on how to build your own Pop Up Pocket Garden at Home.
Lots of activities around the competition themes for children to try at home. Use it to inspire ideas for a Pocket Garden design.
