Garden Club - what's it all about?

Running an after school gardening club for the kids in your community can be as involved or as light-touch as you’d like, but here at FCGN we’ve developed a great model that can be replicated in almost any community green space. Read on for a bit more info and get in touch if you think your green sppce would benefit from this kind of activity in 2024. 

Proximity to the school

Garden Clubs are best run in close proximity to a school/nursery, preferably right in the heart of the local community. Garden Clubs run from approximately 3.30pm – 4.30pm once a week, and the idea is that children, along with their parents or carers, come directly from school pickup. Since Garden Club is run free-of-charge, most schools won’t mind sharing your plans with the kids.

Age and stage of kids

Garden Club is run for kids aged 3 – 10, with any siblings very much welcome. Parents or carers must attend alongside their kids, but welcoming childminders or one parent minding several children is encouraged. Because of the large age range, not every activity will suit every child, but its never stopped our participants from enjoying themselves regardless!

Parental/carer involvement

Parents and carers should be as involved and invested in the club as possible. Its great if you can find parents to help with the little tasks, like keeping a register of attendance or numbers, organising a small snack, helping lead activities, etc. Garden Club works best when there is involvement from the whole family. 

Activities

Gardening, of course! But not just gardening. At Garden Club, we suggest a half and half approach, spending around 30mins gardening (this could be anything from prepping beds to planting seedings, watering to harvesting) and 30mins on another activity, planned ahead of time by the Children’s Gardener. These include cookery, simple craft, campfires – anything that sparks the imagination and inspires joy in the outdoors.

A garden just for them

Children make a mess. They plant things in wonky rows, and toddlers pick the tomatoes before they’re ready – really, the list goes on. Garden Club works best when the children have a section of the garden reserved just for them. Whether that be a series of raised beds in a community garden, or whether you run the club in the school garden, its best for the kids to have a space to experiment, where they are free to garden without the restrictions of what keen adult gardeners might think is proper and right. 

If you’d like to check out a great example of how it can work, check out this garden club in Burntisland. Broomhill Gardens Community Group have been running their garden club now for over a decade and do great work in their community.