On your marks... Get set... grow
just green. Conifers come in a multitude of shades: blue (Colorado spruce ‘ Hoopsi i ’ ) , yel low ( Monterey cypress ‘Goldcrest’) and even gold (Calocedrus decurrens ‘Berrima Gold’). For other shrubs, how about the red foliage of Photinia fraseri ‘ Little Red Robin’? And there’s fabulous Pieris ‘Forest Flame’ too. There are a host of trees, plants and shrubs that can help teach kids about different classifications of plants and their many-splendored colours. Growing a sunflower from seed is a magical project – at home or at school. You’ll need a sunny spot and can start them off from seed or as young plants.
Because they grow rapidly and have such a beautiful flower, it will hold their interest. And you can introduce an element of competition.
There are tons of varieties. ‘American Giant’ can reach up to four metres if you’re lucky, while ‘ Teddy Bear’ or ‘Big Smile’ come in at a more manageable metre or so.
Find a spot with full sun in welldrained soil or pots. You’ve time – just – to get them in the ground and you should be seeing flowers by August.
Kids love bugs. So attracting beneficial insects is another brilliant way of capturing their imaginations. Create insect habitats easily and cheaply, whether by filling drainpipes with straw or putting pine cones in net bags and suspending them from trees.
For a more sophisticated bug hotel, build a simple wooden frame and fill it width-ways with twigs.
The spaces will provide homes for everything from solitary bees to spiders, moths and ladybirds.
Like herbs, growing vegetables makes a quick impact and grabs their attention.
And there’s nothing quite like picking and eating your own fruit and veg, whatever age you are.
Even if you haven’t got a garden area, with some simple containers or grow- bags, you can get started. Dustbins are ideal for growing spuds, while shallower containers will do for carrots and onions.
Tomatoes and strawberries can be grown in hanging baskets, if you’re short of space, or in containers. Bush varieties of tomato should give you a bumper harvest for sharing.
Grow them from seed or buy them as young plants – they produce a marvellous fruit.
This will engage interest in the garden over a longer period of time and the kids can carve faces into them at the end of October for Halloween.
Pumpkins are relatively easy to cultivate but need space, a sunny spot, lots of watering over the summer and shelter from the winds. You can use growbags if space is limited.
A couple of the best-known varieties are ‘Atlantic Giant’ with its classic redorange skin, and ‘Jack Be Little’, a prolific, mainly ornamental mini pumpkin.
Cultivation Street is not a campaign just for the kids – it’s for the whole community.
We’ve got a total of £20,000 in prizes to give away in five brilliant categories – including Cultivation School.
We’re also searching for the UK’s best community gardening project and we’ve got £10,000 of National Garden Gift Vouchers for the overall winner of Community Street 2016.