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Edible Playgrounds
Welcome to July’s Edible News!
We’ve had a bit of sun and a bit of rain – summer is underway! That’s good news for Edible Playgrounds everywhere, and there’s plenty to harvest with salads, beans and other yummy things all ready to eat. There’s not much time to relax here though, with our Edible Playground show garden opening at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show…
The holidays are coming
Your Edible Playground will still need some care over the summer holidays, so ask around to find any teachers, parents or other gardeners you know who could come in and help you with watering and weeding. Maybe you could organise a weekly rota – there’ll certainly be plenty for everyone to pick and eat all summer long!
Update from Hampton Court
Creating an Edible Playground for a big flower show like Hampton Court is a pretty complicated business. Our show garden is much bigger than our Chelsea courtyard garden, and we’re growing a huge variety of edible plants – from cranberry and blueberry bushes to squares of wheat, barley and rye. To make things even more tricky, plants have to be either ‘forced’ (grown quickly) or held back so they’re ready at the same time. Now, with the show about to open, our garden designer Nick Williams-Ellis is worrying about the weather – heavy rain or searing sun could damage the plants. It’ll be a relief when the show opens! The inspiration for this Edible Playground came from lots of different schools, and it includes a wormery, a sedum roof and a wind turbine (inspired by County Primary in Bridport, Dorset) to power a pump to water plants at weekends and through the summer holidays. The Hampton Court Edible Playground will be opened by a group of children from Beaucroft School in Dorset, which was one of the first schools to set up its own Edible Playground in 2007. At the end of the show the whole garden will be recycled and re-sited at Holy Trinity School in Weymouth.
Find out the latest about our Hampton Court garden here
Gardening in July
In July you can really enjoy your efforts in the Edible Playground. You’ll be spoilt for choice, with salad leaves, radishes, French beans, strawberries, courgettes, tomatoes, peas, and carrots.
> Click here for more July tips
Recipe of the month: Herby potato and broad bean salad
This recipe uses ingredients that are ready and in season right now – so make it quick while they’re at their best!
> Click here for this recipe
News from other Edible Playgrounds
Our Gold Medal-winning Chelsea garden has been recycled and re-homed. Children at St Mary’s School in Bridport arrived one morning to find that an instant Edible Playground had sprung up – complete with a 30-year-old apple tree! At Milne’s Primary, Morayshire in Scotland, children have been finding out how people grow food in the dry rocky earth of African villages. The African solution is to create a ‘keyhole’ bed, where the high sides are made with stones and the bed is filled with all sorts of different materials (including rusty cans for iron!) to feed the plants.
You can find out more here
Instead of using rocks – which are much more expensive in Scotland than in Africa! - Milne’s Primary have made their keyhole bed with wooden sides. They have planted it up with plug plants from Rocket Gardens – beetroot, cabbages, cauliflower and leeks. In Africa they would grow beetroot, maize, cabbage, radishes, peppers, chillies, apples and apricots in their gardens.
Back down south at Puddletown School in Dorset, the Edible Playground is burgeoning. Class monitors water the beds and check on them each day, and once a week a class does some weeding. The children are particularly excited that lots of strawberries are ripening... and there’s also lettuce, courgettes and tomato flowers to look forward to before the summer holiday. We hope you have a wonderful summer holiday. Don’t forget to look after those plants! Happy growing!

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Edible Playgrounds is an initiative that has been created by Screen Bites www.screen-bites.co.uk
and is now supported by Dorset Cereals Ltd, Peverell Avenue East, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 3WE.
Registered in England and Wales at the address as above.
Company Registered Number 2867393