Gardening Club - Summer 1

In this hands-on gardening unit, children actively prepare planting areas, sow seeds, and care for a variety of crops while exploring garden ecosystems and food webs. Through planting, harvesting, and practical problem-solving, pupils develop an understanding of farm-to-fork processes, plant growth, and sustainable gardening practices in a fun and interactive way.

Lesson Plans

Sowing pak choi

In this session, children will work together to prepare your planting areas needed for the sessions and sow pak choi.

Session aim:

To have begun to prepare planting areas for this term, and to sow pak choi.

Sowing carrots

By the end of this session, your group will have decided on the various gardening jobs that will need to be done each week and look at how to succesfully plant carrot seeds.

Session aim:

To have decided on our gardening jobs, and sown carrots.

Sowing calendula

In this session, your children will play games to understand more about garden food webs and will take a closer look at dealing with garden pests, as well as sowing their calendula seeds.

Session aim:

To have discussed garden pests and sown calendula.

Sowing chives

During this outdoor lesson your children will work both individually and as part of a group to create a piece of artwork that contains texture. They will look closely at how Monet has used texture in his oil pastel work, before applying this to their own, using nature as a focus.

Session aim:

To explore aromatic plants and to sow chives.

Looking after the potatoes

This session will give your children the opportunity to understand how aromatic plants can help protect crops. They will finish by sowing their chive seeds to revisit in later sessions.

Session aim:

To look after the potatoes.

Harvesting pak choi

This session gives your children the chance to harvest one of their crops and see what it tastes like! It’s a great session for teaching children more about ‘farm to fork’!

Session aim:

To harvest pak choi.

Crop instruction cards - Summer 1

These crop cards are to be used in combination with your Summer 1 after school club gardening pack. They contain everything you need to be able to sow, grow and harvest successfully with your children in your school garden or grounds and are suitable to be used with children across the primary age range.

Crops included:

Pak choi
Carrots
Calendula
Chives

Before you get started

Safety and sustainability is super important!