An educational vegetable garden in crèches (EVEP) – Lancy

In 2024, permaculture is coming to day-care centers! In collaboration with the commune of Lancy‘s early childhood service, 9 vegetable gardens will be planted in the EVEPs to delight the little ones!

A garden for discovery!

Gardening with toddlers is a great opportunity to provide a stimulating setting to whet children’s curiosity. The vegetable garden can help them discover their senses and tastes, as well as focusing on living things and their incredible diversity!

But the garden also teaches patience and group work, and is a good way of emphasizing the notion of « instructions », especially when it comes to using tools.

In short, gardening in a nursery is not « just planting three radishes ».

A project for children and supervisors alike

With a certain amount of experience in setting up and supporting school gardens, we’re well aware of the various obstacles and problems associated with setting up gardens in institutions. That’s why our project doesn’t stop at setting up containers in nurseries. Our project aims to:

• Creating vegetable gardens in day-care centers
• Training supervisors (3 sessions of 2h30)
• Do 1 or 2 sessions with children (to illustrate the training given to supervisors)
• Provide each school with an educational kit

Contents of the teaching kit

In order to simplify the work of the supervisors as much as possible, and to enable them to spend as much time as possible in the vegetable garden without requiring a huge amount of preparation time. We provide all nurseries with an educational kit containing everything they need to set up a garden project.

In this case, you’ll find

• Tools adapted to children’s sizes(not « toy tools » that break on first use…).
• Seeds for a year in the vegetable garden
• A seedbed to help little ones sow evenly
• A detailed schedule of garden activities (sowing, planting, watering…)
• An educational worksheet (laminated A3 format) for each month (March to September), with a « lesson » on the front and 3 or 4 activities on the back.
• Laminated game cards, puzzles and practical information sheets for certain sessions

On each sheet, you’ll find songs and stories linked to this page via a QR-Code. Intended for use by supervisors, we’ve opted for this method to limit the use (and loss…) of loose sheets.

Pooling: « the art of doing more with less

By intervening in 9 crèches at once, the commune of Lancy multiplies the impact while minimizing costs. By pooling our efforts, it’s..:

• Fewer coordination coordination
• Less travel
• Lower budget for setting up gardens (assembly in series)
• 3-fold reduction in delivery costs for various materials
• A wholesale price for seeds
• 3-fold reduction in training time (and therefore cost) for supervisors

By targeting all crèches, the project provides a certain level of « equal opportunities in all, almost all the children in the commune, reinforcing the impact of the project. Eventually, the entire population will have had, even if only for a year, a link with the vegetable garden, vegetables and the discovery of living things.

The garden month by month

Below you’ll find some free-access materials. All teaching aids are available for sale on request.

March in the toddlers’ vegetable garden :

It’s the start of the season in the toddler garden! It’s the perfect time to sow the first seeds in the garden!

April in the toddlers’ vegetable garden :

Spring is here!!! It’s the perfect time to go gardening! You can sow, plant, or just watch nature awaken, there’s no shortage of activities.

May in the toddlers’ vegetable garden :

May is mating season for most of the garden’s inhabitants. It’s time to build them homes and shelters to welcome their young.

June in the children’s garden :

If you’ve followed all our advice, June is the time for the first harvests! Taste, smell, the garden appeals to all your senses!

July in the children’s garden :

Summer is on its way! It’s the perfect time to go outside and play, or to take shelter under a tree for the time of a story.

August in the children’s garden :

It’s really too hot to work… How about a moment of zen in the vegetable garden?

September in the children’s vegetable garden :

As summer draws to a close, it’s time to eat the last of the tomatoes and think about the winter garden. But do you know how to plant cabbage?

Many thanks to Service de la petite enfance de la commune de Lancy as well as to the sustainable development department for their support in this project!

Thanks also to the supervisors and management of the various EVEPs for their commitment to this project!

And, of course, a big congratulations to our little gardeners in short pants!

« The species that survive are not the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but those that best adapt to change. »
Charles Darwin