castle kids patch - Patch Progress

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Patch Progress

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As I write this, the first tomatoes are beginning to ripen in Polly the Polytunnel, the sunflowers are stretching taller every day and another wonderful summer term at Patch Pals after-school club has come to an end.

It’s hard to believe how much has happened over the past few month. Seeds have become thriving vegetables, children who arrived a little shy are now confidently watering, harvesting and helping one another and our little allotment has become busier and more colourful than ever.

This term has been particularly special because it has been the first full set of clubs funded by The National Lottery Community Fund. Their support has allowed us to welcome more local children and families to the Patch, something that has always been at the heart of what we do.

Beyond the Patch, we’ve also celebrated some exciting milestones. Winning Gold at the Bath & West Show was an unforgettable experience and has opened so many new conversations and opportunities for Castle Kids’ Patch. It feels as though our little community project is beginning to grow roots far beyond our allotment gates.

Life at the Patch

The children have been harvesting courgettes, carefully searching for hidden bugs, making friends, staying cool and discovering just how many creatures share the allotment with us.

One of my favourite things about running the clubs is watching children return week after week. There’s something wonderful about seeing them become more confident, more curious and more willing to try new things. The Patch has never really been about growing vegetables.. it’s about growing people too!

Now our attention turns to one of my favourite parts of the year: our Summer Holiday Clubs.

We’ll still be gardening, harvesting, playing games and sharing stories together, but this year we’re also welcoming some wonderful local guest hosts, who’ll be introducing the children to floristry, cooking with fresh produce, printmaking, natural plant dyeing and more. I can’t wait to see what they create and discover.

Behind the Patch Gate

For those of you who are interested in the practical side of things, I thought I’d begin sharing a little more about what happens behind the scenes.

Like many community projects, Castle Kids’ Patch often looks wonderfully simple from the outside. Children arrive, seeds are planted, snacks are eaten and muddy boots head home at the end of the sessions.

In reality, there are funding applications, lesson plans, risk assessments, watering schedules, volunteer sessions, social media posts, endless weeding and a remarkable amount of admin.

I’m hoping to share more of this side of the project over the coming months for anyone dreaming of creating something similar in their own community. If our little patch of Somerset can inspire another children’s garden somewhere else, that would be rather lovely.

July has been one of those months where much of the work has happened quietly in the background.

While the children have been busy watering, harvesting and playing, I’ve been preparing and setting up for our Summer Holiday Clubs. Uploading spaces via BookWhen, planning activities, gathering resources and contacting some wonderfully talented local people to come and share their skills with the children. I think this is going to be a fantastic way of linking the community with the project, bringing together different areas that connect through a love for nature and the outdoors. I have been blown away by the generosity of time of these incredible people and really recommend it if you are trying to drum up more community interest in your similar project.

I’ve also started working on our next National Lottery Community Fund application. It feels rather strange to be planning for 2027 when we’re only just admiring the first ripe tomatoes of 2026, but that’s the reality of running a community project. There always seems to be one eye on the present season and another looking ahead to the next.

Another exciting development has been the possibility of finding more growing space for Castle Kids’ Patch. I’ve spent time talking with local organisations and exploring whether there might be land available that would allow us to create more room for children to learn, grow and explore nature together.

Of course, alongside all of that, there has been the usual weeding, watering, pruning, tidying, seed sowing, email writing, social media posting and endless harvesting of courgettes.

Running a children’s gardening club is, it turns out, rather a lot like gardening itself. Most of the important work happens little by little and often out of sight. Then one day something wonderful appears.

See you at the Patch,

Dusk

June 1st 2026 - The Royal Bath & West Show 2026

Castle Kids' Patch was so honoured to be asked to show a pop-up children's garden at the Royal Bath and West Show 2026. Much to our delight and surprise we were awarded a GOLD award for our space! So much hard work and love went into it's creation and you can see from the pictures it was a colourful and magical haven at the showground this year.

The inspiration behind our garden was to try and replicate the feeling of our Patch in Stoke-sub-Hamdon pasted into the Bath and West Showground. To do so we created mini beds within the bed provided, planted up with colourful Patch-Grown plants to show how you can create an exciting and thrilling garden for kids using vegetables & flowers to inspire. We decorated with hand-made clay cane toppers crafted by the Patch Pals in gardening club. We hung pictures of the Patch pals and descriptions of their favourite things about The Patch, and even created a small frog pond complete with a few floaty frogs for children to catch throughout the show.

We sowed hundreds of sunflower seeds with the kids attending the show who all took them home to grow on, we met hundreds of people and managed to spread the word not only about Castle Kids' Patch but also about how important kids gardens are. All in all it was an absolutely brilliant week and we are so proud and grateful to have been there and to hang our GOLD award back at The Patch.

-Dusk & The Castle Kids' Patch Team 🌻

May 9th 2026 - Article in The Western Gazette

We were so pleased to see the article written by Nancy Connolly all about Castle Kids' Patch and the impact it is having on our fantastic local community in the historic newspaper The Western Gazette. Read the full article via the link below:

Read Here: The Western Gazette

-Dusk & The Castle Kids' Patch Team 🌻

April 29th 2026 - Spring at the Patch 🌱

So much has already happened at Castle Kids’ Patch CIC this year. After what felt like a very long muddy winter, the Patch is finally starting to wake up again and suddenly everywhere you look there’s seedlings, flowers, children watering things and me trying to remember where I left the trowel five minutes ago!

This spring term our after-school clubs planted potatoes, sowed peas, sunflowers, chard, radishes and onions. We made nature crafts, painted, explored, harvested bits here and there and mostly just enjoyed being outside together. One of my favourite things has been seeing how confident the children are becoming at the Patch now. Lots of them know exactly where tools go, which plants need watering first and how to carefully carry trays of seedlings without tipping compost absolutely everywhere (most of the time 😅).

We’ve also started adding more colourful edible planting around the Patch this year which I’ve been really excited about. Lots more rainbow chard, flowers mixed in with vegetables, nasturtiums tumbling everywhere and hopefully more of a slightly wild, cheerful feel. I love the idea that children can wander around and discover things growing in every corner instead of everything being in neat straight lines.

One of the biggest changes this year has definitely been the new shelter area. I genuinely can’t imagine the Patch without it now. It’s already changed our sessions so much and gives us somewhere to gather for crafts, snacks, seed sowing and just sitting down for a cup of tea when the weather inevitably changes its mind halfway through a session. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who helped us make that happen.

Our Friday Garden & Chat mornings have continued this year too and those mornings have become such a lovely part of the project. Some days we get loads done, other days we mostly drink tea and talk while vaguely moving compost around, but both feel equally important really. It’s slowly becoming the sort of community space I always hoped the Patch might turn into.

This year we also started Mini Patch Pals, our little baby and toddler sessions, which has been such a sweet addition. Tiny wellies wandering around the allotment watering plants and collecting stones has been one of my favourite things so far this year. It feels really special seeing children experience the Patch from such a young age.

Behind the scenes there’s also been lots of less exciting but very important things happening too. Funding applications, planning, fixing things, moving things, trying to work out how to fit approximately 400 future ideas into one allotment plot 😅 We’ve got lots of dreams for the next few years though. I’d love more perennial fruit and veg beds, more flowers, more spaces for wildlife and eventually a proper little glass greenhouse for growing seedlings.

Mostly though, this year has reminded me why I started all of this in the first place. There’s something really lovely about slowing down and growing things together, especially for children. Watching them pull up a radish they grew themselves or proudly show somebody a sunflower they planted weeks ago never really gets old.

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the Patch so far this year, whether that’s volunteering, donating, booking clubs, sharing our posts or just cheering us on from the sidelines. We’re very lucky to have such a lovely community around us 🌻

Patch Progress - 2025 Winter Update

We’ve had a very busy summer at Castle Kids' Patch. Over the summer months we ran lots of clubs for the local children, grew tons of vegetables together and then sold any spares to the community via our local veg stand, hosted our Garden & Chat days and met some lovely new friends who support CKP.

Our Autumnal Club was a real treat where we picked our pumpkins and rainbow corn, made Patch the Scarecrow, created leaf crowns, planted Spring bulbs and much more! We were also delighted to say a big thank you to the community at our Autumn Celebration.

Now winter is here and the Patch is winding down for a bit of a rest. But there is still plenty happening behind the scenes. George Young and John Sams are very kindly constructing our new Patch Shelter. This is made possible thanks to the generous funds donated by the Stoke Charity Shop through the Sports and Rec Fund.

Watch this space for a final look at the finished shelter and for updates on when our clubs and Garden & Chat sessions will start up again in early 2026 when the weather warms up.

A huge thank you to everyone who came along, supported, helped, and worked hard at the Patch this year. We could not have done it without you!

-Dusk & The Castle Kids' Patch Team

Tuesday 1st July

We were lucky enough to be featured in Charles Dowdings Future Gardeners Newsletter this month, please see ahead for the article printed:

Hi Future Gardeners!

I’m Dusk, the Patch Co-Ordinator from Castle Kids’ Patch CIC in Somerset. We launched our project in February 2025, and it has blossomed into a thriving allotment space for local children and the wider community.

We’re lucky to be close to the incredible Skool Beanz, which inspired our project right from the start! Lara from Skool Beanz is a true force of nature - kind, generous, and inspiring. She’s even donated a perfect little polytunnel to help get us growing! Lara hosts adult course days, where I learnt so much about setting up a children’s gardening club.

We initially started in connection with our local school, but after our fundraising activities and general community support proved to be exceedingly successful, it became clear we needed to get more organised. That meant opening a bank account! I proposed transitioning the project into a Community Interest Company (CIC), which would allow us to be a standalone organisation with its own structure.

Surprisingly, setting up the CIC was much simpler than I expected. The online application was straightforward and only required a small fee. The only hurdle was that CICs are advised to have a majority of unrelated directors, so I reached out to our local community. Thankfully two incredible individuals stepped up, and they’ve since become brilliant additions to our team!

Now that we’re a CIC, and I’m DBS-checked and First Aid certified, I can run clubs outside of school hours - which has taken things to the next level!

We’ve raised a fantastic amount of funds through our local community. We’ve run a school Spring Fair and held a stall at our village May Fair, where we sold crafts made by the children and plants (a great excuse to over-sow seeds!). We’ve also been active on social media which has connected us with local businesses and encouraged community donations.

Right now, we host a weekly after-school club but we have just launched our summer holiday clubs too which will extend our reach. The children are so enthusiastic and curious. Watching them get excited about a pea pod or a blooming sweet pea is honestly the highlight of my week. We’ve had children who’d never try certain foods happily munch on spinach straight from the plant - much to their parents’ surprise! One child even began the session saying, “I don’t like gardening, it’s boring,” and left saying, “I’m going to grow my favourite food at home - TOMATOES!” It’s these little moments that remind me how vital it is to offer children these experiences. It truly opens up a whole new world for them.

Some Top Tips from Me:

● Find your people: Put the word out on social media that you’re starting a children’s gardening club. Tag your local adults’ gardening clubs or parent groups, maybe ask your local school to send it out to their parent’s list. Ask anyone interested in getting involved to get in touch.

● Show examples: I shared lots of pictures from Skool Beanz with our local gardening club and school to show the potential of a project like this.

● Reach out to local businesses: Many businesses are keen to support initiatives like ours because it aligns with their community values. A well-written proposal goes a long way, so don’t be afraid to ask for donations!

● Getting kids engaged: Don’t force it. Some children might be unsure at first, and that’s totally fine. I like to set up a few different activity stations: a craft table, some gardening jobs with me (like planting or seed sowing), a couple of nature-themed books, and something more physical like moving woodchip. That way, there’s something for every kind of energy and interest. In my experience, once they’ve had time to explore, most kids naturally wander over to see what’s going on with the planting. And if you’re stuck, ask them to water the plants. I’ve yet to meet a child who doesn’t love using a watering can!

Thursday 5th June

A Huge Patch Update! What a transformation!

Thanks to an incredible amount of hard work from our directors and volunteers, especially Martin Eastment who has spent countless hours making this happen, we have now built, filled, and even planted up 12 beds.

This is such an exciting milestone for Castle Kids' Patch and it really brings the project to life.

The children from our Patch Pals gardening club have been busy sowing and growing tomatoes, peas, kohlrabi, spinach, radishes, dwarf beans, beetroot, carrots, and more. In their sessions they planted everything out into the beds and they look absolutely fantastic.

A huge thank you to everyone who is helping make this amazing project a reality. We are growing something really special together.

-Dusk and the Castle Kids' Patch Team

Monday 26th May

We had a brilliant time at the May Fayre. Thank you so much to the organisers for giving us a plot, it was a fantastic chance to share what Castle Kids' Patch is all about.

We ran a free sunflower planting activity for children and it was non-stop. So many young gardeners took part and proudly took their sunflower pots home to grow. We have invited families to share photos of their sunflowers as they grow and there will be a prize for the tallest one later in the season!

Our main goal for the day was to raise awareness of the project and let people know how they can join in. But we also raised £72.65 through donations and the sale of our handmade garden crafts, including plant labels and cane toppers. Every penny will go straight back into running Castle Kids' Patch.

We were blown away by the support from the community. Thank you to everyone who stopped by, planted a seed, made a donation or simply showed interest in what we are doing. It means the world.

-Dusk & The Castle Kids' Patch Team

Tuesday 29th April

What a brilliant day we had at the Castle Primary School Spring Fair!

A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by whether you bought a plant, had an ice cream, or simply cheered us on! With your support, we raised £283.47 for the Patch, which will go directly towards seeds, compost, and materials to help our young gardeners keep growing!

Our fair was full of colour and excitement, with plants lovingly raised by the Patch Pals, a lucky dip for the kids, and homemade garden-themed goodies. It was wonderful to meet so many parents, carers, and community members curious about the Patch and the work the children will be doing.

Special thanks to all the volunteers who helped us set up and run the stall. Your enthusiasm makes all the difference.

If you'd like to get involved, you’re always welcome to join us at our Friday Volunteer Mornings

Here’s to sunshine, seedlings, and growing together 🌱