Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Little green fingers..
You’ll really dig the National Trust’s adorable new gardening range for kids which will help them get stuck into the muck... and protect local nature projects for their future
Ihad a little chuckle to myself the other day. It was the 2nd birthday of one of my best friend’s daughter. Imagine that, only two birthdays and both of them spent in lockdown (they live down South). Thankfully she won’t remember, and, as is wonderful about children, it didn’t hinder her fun in the slightest.
In our WhatsApp group, my friend shared a pic of her little girl playing with her new toy – a mud kitchen. She was in her absolute element.
But I promptly wrote back how my little girl would cause muddy hell if we bought her such a device for her birthday as she HATES dirt of any kind. When I thought about being a mum, I always pictured having a little one who would embrace the outdoors and who would enjoy physically exploring the world.
I didn’t envisage having a child who comes running up to me with a pained look on her face when she gets a speck of dirt anywhere on her body asking me to wipe it off. A child who refuses to wear her favourite shoes anywhere other than the house because she doesn’t want them to get dirty. A child who is possibly the only child in the world who doesn’t like Play-Doh because it “feels yucky”.
But that’s what I have. And it’s fine. But it just means I don’t get to share one of my interests with her as much as I’d like – gardening. She is getting better though, with a bit of encouragement and gentle persuasion, she has been known to pick up a trowel and water the plants, but again, it’s never long before the dirt issue gets in the way.
So I set out to find a range of kids gardening tools to entice her to join me in getting down and dirty and and I really dig the National Trust’s Get Me Gardening by Burgon & Ball collection.
It has been created to appeal to children of all ages, and not only does it look good, it does good too as a minimum of £15,000 from sales of the range will go towards supporting the work the organisation does in conserving local heritage.