Children’s Gardening Week, butterflies and beautiful salads

24 May – 1 June 2025
www.childrensgardeningweek.co.uk
www.plantlife.org.uk/campaigns/nomowmay

by Marianne Lindfield – Climate Action Engagement Officer, SGL

Children’s Gardening Week arrives as May gives way to June, when the garden has found its stride and everything is stretching into summer. It often falls during half term, which makes it the perfect time to step outside and share the garden with the children in our lives. For those taking part in No Mow May, this is when the garden starts to look wilder, the grasses taller, and flowers that were once called weeds begin to feel like gifts. Buttercups, oxeye daisies and self-heal creep through the lawn, and the air starts to hum with insect life again.

It is a moment for noticing. Children are naturally tuned into the small things we often overlook. A curled leaf can hold a hidden insect, and a dandelion seedhead might spark a whole conversation. Being in the garden together does not need to be structured. A slow walk, time spent watching one flower, or simply lying on the grass and listening can lead to all sorts of shared discoveries.

One year, I raised caterpillars with my children. We watched them feed and grow in a netted enclosure, and we made sure the right plants were growing in the garden before we let them go. That small project opened up much more than I expected. The children began asking questions not just about butterflies, but about the plants they needed and how they linked with the others in the garden. It helped them understand that everything is connected, that what we grow, what we leave, and what we choose to remove all have consequences.

These are the kinds of quiet lessons that the garden teaches well. They echo ideas found in permaculture, where nothing is wasted and each element is chosen to serve more than one purpose. A garden bed designed with this in mind can be surprisingly productive. It can feed people, provide shelter and food for insects, improve the soil, and offer colour and joy.

Calendula is one of my favourites to grow with children. It brings a bright splash of orange and gold that they love to pick, but it also attracts hoverflies that eat aphids, and the petals can be used in salads or steeped in tea. Borage has soft, blue, star-shaped flowers that are edible and beloved by bees. You can use them to make a simple flower salad with calendula that is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate. Chives are another useful plant, with flowers that attract butterflies and leaves that add flavour to meals.

At Sussex Green Living, we are putting some of these ideas into practice through our Pollination Education Station project. These stations are being installed in schools, churches and community spaces across Sussex to give people ideas, spark curiosity and share simple, practical knowledge about what insects need to thrive. Each one acts as a visible, local resource, showing how a small patch of land can be planted to provide nectar, shelter, water and nesting space. They also help to start conversations. When people see pollinators at work and understand what supports them, they are more likely to make space for them in their own gardens, balconies or verges.

Children’s Gardening Week is a wonderful time to explore those ideas together. The focus is not on perfection but on observation, experimentation and care. At this point in the season there is still time to sow sunflowers or nasturtiums, both of which grow quickly and bring colour and delight. Nasturtiums spill over edges and produce edible leaves and flowers while drawing in hoverflies. Sunflowers track the sun and bring in bees, and children love to watch them stretch taller day by day.

Other simple activities include making a bee water station with a shallow dish filled with pebbles and rainwater, or gathering hollow stems, pine cones and sticks to build an insect home in a quiet corner. Sitting with a notebook and drawing what you see, counting how many types of bees visit the garden, or writing down questions to return to later can be just as valuable as any planting activity.

Eating from the garden adds another layer of learning. Picking herbs for lunch or collecting edible flowers helps children understand that food comes from somewhere real. It also shows them that they are part of the ecosystem, not separate from it. When they grow the things they eat and share that food with others, it nurtures not only their bodies but their sense of care and responsibility.

Permaculture often speaks of stacking functions, where each element in a garden serves more than one role. But in truth, the garden itself does this naturally. A patch of wild grass might provide nectar, shelter and nesting material for insects while also offering a place for children to sit and wonder. A small herb bed might flavour a meal, attract pollinators and open the door to conversations about how plants have been used across generations.

By the end of May, with Children’s Gardening Week in full swing and No Mow May shaping the edges of our spaces, we can begin to see how the garden becomes something more than a collection of plants. It becomes a space to slow down, to observe and to reconnect with the living world. It becomes a place to grow together, learning not through instruction but through curiosity and shared attention.

To find out more about how to bring a Pollination Education Station to your school or community, or to support the project in Sussex, visit www.sussexgreenliving.org.uk/renature.