The Garden Classroom – Interview and Book Give Away

I have been lucky to ‘meet’ some really lovely people online, and one of the loveliest is Cathy James from NurtureStore.

Today we are all lucky as I have a quick interview with Cathy to share where I ask here about life as a Mum, her love of gardening and her lovely new book The Garden Classroom.

Kate: Tell us a little about yourself and your family.

Cathy: Hi Kate. I’m a mum of two girls, I live in the UK, and I write the blog NurtureStore, which is all about creative kids learning. We live on the edge of a city in the UK and we have a tiny garden. We really try and make the most of the space, but I always look longingly at all the space you have when you share your gardening posts! We homeschool now, but I used to run a school gardening club, where a team of 8 and 9-year-olds looked after a fruit and vegetable plot.

Kate: What lead you to write The Garden Classroom?

Cathy: I’m always sharing the activities I do with my children on the NurtureStore site, but I realised we are happiest when we’re in the garden and working with nature. So I thought I would gather together all the ideas to share them in one resource.

I’ve seen so many children benefit from being involved with gardening, in all sorts of ways, and seen how children can come alive in a garden classroom, and how school lessons can be learnt outdoors. I wanted the book to be a really useful resource both for people who are already gardening and want to add more creative play and learning to the experience, and for those just starting out who’d like someone to help them work out the best way to begin growing and learning outdoors.

Kate: Tell us a little about your garden. What is your favourite thing to grow? What is your biggest challenge in the garden?

Cathy: It’s so small. That’s the biggest challenge.

We live in a Victorian house, in a city, so we have a walled garden that is nice and sheltered. I like to grow as much as I can, packing things in, so we can experience home-grown flowers, fruit and vegetables, even if we’ll never be self-sufficient. We grow veggies in raised beds and lots of pots.

I love growing herbs, they’re great for bees and butterflies and I love brushing passed the mint and rosemary and releasing the fragrance. I grow them right outside the kitchen door so we can easily reach out and pick some when we’re cooking, and I don’t have to send the kids out in the dark or rain to fetch them from down the garden!

Kate: What is your favourite thing to cook from your garden produce?

Cathy: The children love to pick things straight from the plants and eat them there and then, so some things don’t even make it to the kitchen! Nothing beats growing your own food, does it?

I’ve included some of my favourite recipes in the book, including a great recipe for harvest soup, which is lovely as a community meal to round off the gardening year, and yummy basil pesto sauce which is so easy – my daughter loves to make that to go on pasta.

Kate: What one gardening activity should everyone have a go at?

Cathy: Grow sunflowers!

The first part of the book is called Let’s Grow! Garden Basics and I’ll take you through my top five choices for gardening with children. I’ve picked things that are really easy to grow, and which will give you such an interesting and varied gardening experience, so there’s lots for the children to learn.

But, if you’re going to make me pick just one thing, especially as a first project, it would be sunflowers. They’re so beautiful, and so interesting. You can follow the whole cycle from planting a tiny seed, watching a huge plant grow, right through to harvesting your own seeds at the end of the year. There are some fun sunflower-themed activities in the book that you can try too. We have some sunflowers growing in clear plastic pots on our kitchen table right now. It’s way to let children watch the seeds grown and it sparks lots of discussion at family mealtimes.

You can find Cathy at her blog NurtureStore, as well as on facebook, pinterest and instagram

As you can see my boys had a great time making and planing egg heads on a rainy afternoon and bookmarked a whole host of other ideas, activities and recipes that they want to try. The Garden Classroom is a lovely book full of practical information and doable activities to get everyone out in the garden, growing and learning. You can find a sneak peek inside the book and download your free garden journal pages over here at NurtureStore.

The Garden Classroom by Cathy James, is published by Roost Books, an imprint of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA.

It is available at Amazon, Roost Books, Book Despository and many other book retailers.

Win A Copy of The Garden Classroom.

I have a copy of the Garden Classroom to give away to one lucky Australian reader. To go into the draw simply leave a comment on this post answering the following question:

If you could grow anything in the world what would it be and why?

This competition is now closed. Congratulations to Sarah who was chosen as the winner.

Entries close Monday May 4th and are open to Australian residents only – see full terms and conditions below.

 
 
Competition Terms and Conditions.
You must be 18 + years of age to enter.
You must provide a valid email address and entries are limited to one per household.
Entries close Monday May 4th 2015 at midday Australian EST.
Entries will be judged on merit and creativity.
One winner will receive a copy of the The Garden Classroom book – prizes may differ to the ones shown here.
Winner will be contacted by email and announced on this post by Wednesday May 6th 2015.
The winner must contact me within 5 days or the prize will be re-drawn.
The winner agrees to have their contact details passed on to the appropriate PR company or brand representative who will send out/organise the prizes directly.

{Disclosure: we were given a copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own. }