Tring Beavers visit the allotment – and love it!

This is a belated post but something I thought was still worth sharing.  A couple of weekends ago we had the Tring Beaver group visit us at Tring Allotments and was fantastic fun for all involved.

Twenty-five 7-9 year olds,  their leader, Heron and 5 other adults came to learn about the allotments.  I was terrified at the prospect but the experience has left me, my wife Charlotte and our neighbours and fellow plot holders Gary and Rachel with a big smile.  I was also told by Sue Atherton (Heron) that it was one of the best trips the Beavers had done .

We split the Beavers into four groups.  Group 1, the Darwins would explore the allotments being careful to stay on the paths and not touch anything unless they asked.  Group 2 would do some tasting (I gave up some carrots, beetroot, lettuce and peas for this); Group 3 would do some planting (sunflowers in pots) and Group 4 would weed Gary’s plot.  We rotated after 10 minutes so every group would get a chance to do each activity.  It was genuine fun!

I learnt something too: raw beetroot was a fave with kids (who’da thunk it?), child labour is alive and kicking in Tring, albeit disguised as teaching kids about weeding, and kids knew an awful lot about planting stuff already.

For those interested there are some more images here.