Courtyard Gardens
Motor Neurone Disease – Shetland Croft House Garden
The Dorset Cereals Edible Playground
Awards
This garden was awarded a Gold Medal and won
Best Courtyard Garden
Dorset Cereals
The Dorset Cereals Edible Playground
Designer: Nick Williams-Ellis
Contractor: James Marshall Garden Developments
Sponsor: Dorset Cereals
This garden is a showcase for a 2008 national campaign sponsored by Dorset Cereals called Edible Playgrounds. This initiative seeks to educate, inspire and encourage schools and community groups to develop a small garden in which to grow food.
The Dorset Cereals Edible Playground shows how a corner of a typical Dorset village school playground could be adapted to form a productive and attractive garden where young children can learn about and experience the thrill of growing their own food.
The plants are selected to enhance the children’s enjoyment and understanding of what they eat, and varieties that can be harvested as far as possible during school term times will be included.
Salad plants, for example radishes and cut-and-come-again salads, provide quick results. Rainbow chard and beetroot provide colour and a small patch of wheat shows where bread comes from.
Hanging baskets of strawberries and tomatoes are suspended from the walls. A permanent herb bed at the centre of the garden can be used in the school kitchen, or to flavour the children’s own cooking including bay, rosemary, chives, parsley, sage and thyme.
The key structural plants are a mature apple tree, an espaliered plum and a specimen grape vine.
