LandAlive is a new South West conference focussing on regenerative or nature-

friendly farming. It will feature a two-day programme of talks by top experts in regenerative farming and sustainable food. Skool Beanz will be there on Saturday, discussing our we can inspire the next generation of growers. The new conference will be held at the Bath and West Showground.

Happy to host our first ever Christmas market, selling lots of nature and gardening inspired arts and crafts including seeds and indoor wreaths with live music and sweet treats. If you would like to have a table to sell your creations, it is free of charge, just send an email. Look forward to welcoming you in from the cold!

We are proud to offer adult day courses for anyone interested in starting a children's gardening club, creating a children's garden or just looking for top tips on how to engage little beanz in the garden. No gardening experience required. Everyone welcome aged 18+.

Sun 23 March

Sun 27 April

Sun 25 May

Sun 15 June

Sun 13 July

Sun 17 August

Sun 21 September

Sun 12 October

10am - 4pm. £95 Lunch included.

Excited to have a Skool Beanz stall at this lovely market. We will be selling our new greetings cards, seeds, cane toppers, wooden spoon plant labels, Charles Dowding No Dig Kids books and calendars, plus lots more. Come and say hello!

10am - 3pm

Find us on Digby Road.

What an honour to be on the front cover of Permaculture Magazine. We love spreading the Skool Beanz joy and hope that sharing our story will inspire others. This issue celebrates community gardening, our favourite kind of gardening. 

This will be our third NGS Open Day and we absolutely love opening our allotment to the public raising money for this fabulous charity who divide the money raised between wonderful charities around the country including Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie and lots of community gardens. Join us for homemade teas and cakes and live music.

Skool Beanz is excted to be at this family friendly event almost a stones throw away from our allotment HQ. Come and say hello and get stuck into an arty gardening inspired activity

Lara was thrilled to talk to the lovely Shannon @diaryofaladygardener flying the flag for Skool Beanz and children's gardening on her brilliant 'The Lady Gardeners' podcast. Hope you enjoy.

Skool Beanz is delighted to be at this lovely fair for the first time, running fun activities including making origami seeds packets, fabric flowers and oat milk carton microgreen salads. This fair is special because it's aims are:

• To raise environmental awareness through creative activities.
• To promote sustainable communities in South Somerset
• To engage the local community in Green Issues
• To promote and celebrate the emerging, green and traditional activity of scything

We look forward to seeing you there.

Looking forward to opening our Skool Beanz allotment to the public for this special event, raising money for Yeovil Breast Cancer Unit a cause close to our hearts after losing two lovely ladies in our village to breast cancer. 8 gardens will be open on the day, with a vintage car ferrying people up and down the village, live music and plenty of homemade tea and cakes. Do come along and show your support. 

Skool Beanz is thrilled to be designing a children's garden for this legendary show. We are pulling all the stops out, recreating all the favourite must haves from our original Skool Beanz allotment. This children's garden will include a quiet wildlife garden with dead hedge and secret den, a polytunnel kindly provided by First Tunnels, water collecting station, Muddy Buddy compost heap, No-Dig veg beds, raised beds, bath tubs, and toilet planters, upcyled art by Yeovil Creatives and 'Imagine, Learn and Create' and lots of colourful plants generously sponsored by Brimsmore Garden Centre. We can't wait to show you around!

This is the second year we have a stand at this fabulous event at Nine Springs in Yeovil bringing everyone together and celebrating our precious Earth and the nature and plants within her.

Lara from Skool Beanz is honoured to be speaking at this online event. Are you a gardening club leader, teacher, parent, or grandparent? Would you like to start a gardening club or create a children’s garden in your local community? With a panel of experienced children’s gardening creators and teachers, this is a place to share ideas and top tips on how to inspire the next generation of gardeners. Charles Dowding will introduce the forum and our panel of speakers. Each speaker will give an overview of their project, once everyone has spoken we will have a Q&A session. Start time is 11.30am GMT and we expect to finish at 1pm

It's that time of year again when we dress as our favourite spooky veg, bug or flower and guess the weight of the giant pumpkin - will we ever beat the whopping 48.9kg we grew in our first year?! This year we are delighted to have professional storyteller Helen Bruce tell us interactive stories with drumming around the fire. We can't wait to see you there!

A highlight this year was entering South West in Bloom It's Your Neighbourhood 2023. A lovely judge came to visit us just as we finished our after school gardening club. As I showed him around the garden, a little bean chased him with a bubble gun! As bubbles flew everywhere and he took the colouful organised chaos of the Skool Beanz allotment in, he exclaimed ''I don't think I've ever seen anything like this!'' Turns out Level 5 Outstanding means that's a good thing!

Another pinch ourselves moment this summer was when the Willy Wonka of Veg and my old boss, mentor and friend Charles Dowding came to film a holiday gardening club. The sun shone and the children helped Charles pick fruit, veg and flowers. A wonderful morning we will never forget.

A pinch ourselves moment was welcoming the Gardener's World team and community gardening hero Tayshan Hayden - Smith to spend a couple of days with us on the Skool Beanz allotment filming some of the activities we get up to. In true English summer style, it absolutely poured down on the second day of filming but that didn't dampen the little beanz spirits and we hope the magic and joy we experience from gardening shines through your tv screens.

We are thrilled to host our second NGS Open Day of the Year, welcoming you to look around our children's allotment. With tea and cake served at The Rec, live music, market stalls, plants for sale, creative gardening activities and lots of fun for all the family.

We are excited to be part of the Somerset Food Trail this year. Bring a picnic and sit amongst the beautiful flowers and veg at the Skool Beanz allotment. A lovely afternoon for all the family.

Skool Beanz is running this fun workshop encouraging you to get arty and planty! Go green and learn how to upcycle and decorate pots, plant a pizza, make origami seed packets, decorate a jam jar lid for our ‘Jamdelier,’ paint a wooden spoon plant label and grow a microgreen salad and much more!

This is our second year at this lovely family friendly music festival in our village running creative gardening workshops.

The money raised goes to School in a Bag, the wonderful charity who send School Bags filled with educational resources to poor, orphan, vulnerable, disadvantaged and disaster-affected children around the world.

It's National Children's Gardening Week 27th May - 4th June and what better way to celebrate than to spend the day at Wisley with my friend Charles Dowding, delivering creative gardening workshops in the beautiful new Hilltop building to keen little gardeners and their adults. Thank you to eveyone who joined us and made it so fun.

Thank you National Garden Scheme for publishing this article I wrote about the reasons behind starting Skool Beanz and why I'm so passionate about teaching gardening to children.

Come along and visit the Skool Beanz Allotments (we have 4!) and our community orchard at our NGS open days this year on Saturday 15th April and Saturday 12th August.

With plenty of garden inspiration and fun children's gardening activities along with stalls selling seeds, plants, Skool Beanz art creations, jewellry, woodturning and delicious tea and cake served at The Rec.

We can't wait to see you there.

Thank you so much to the Sherborne Times for featuring us and sharing the Skool Beanz joy.

Thank you so much to everyone who kindly donated to this fund. What a great way to kick start the new year.

Biggest thanks goes to garden writer extraordinaire Matt Biggs for seeking me out and writing this lovely article about my gardening story and the reasons why I'm so passionate about teaching children the joys of gardening.