It's unbelievable, but we have had our garden since September 2019. An unimaginably impenetrable jungle. We know how much we want this garden and we are brimming with ideas what we can use such a garden for. Tomatoes... strawberries... chickens... goats... a pond... an insect hotel... There is no shortage of ideas :)
However, our introduction is beyond the wildest dreams of any gardener. It was so overgrown we don't even know how we actually got in, and the legendary "Chernobyl Day" followed... You won't believe us if you weren't there. Gas masks, state police agents, sirens, all happening in our beautifully wild jungle. We enjoyed it immensely.
After this introductory event we enjoyed an autumn harvest ritual, which served as the basis for serious discussions, what we want the garden to look like and what we want to use it for.
During these group discussions we establish that half of the garden will remain wild to give shelter to many animals. It has stayed so to this day. We do not cultivate this part of the garden and we let it live its own life. We want to farm the other half of the garden. For the time being we have abandoned the idea of keeping animals in the garden because the responsibility for them is too great and we are not ready for it. We clean the garden over and over again, finding that the plants are not hiding from us and are just growing beautifully at their own pace over and over again, despite our intentions to tame them.
We want to have at least a small place for ourselves, so we repair old furniture and build benches out of planks of wood so that we can have a place for snacktime.
During Covid and the various restrictions and quarantines, when we have to sit at home in front of computers, we carefully study different approaches to growing crops. We know that our basic inspiration is permaculture. We also study different irrigation systems, which plants are best grown together, and so on. At home, we pre-grow small herb and vegetable plants from seeds and finally plant them in our first raised beds in late spring.
But when we return from our holidays, we are disappointed - nature has done things her own way again! The raised beds are overgrown with grass (they weren't tall enough) and we are tripping over the wild raspberry bushes, which didn't produce a single raspberry and have their wild tendrils encroaching everywhere!
Nevertheless, we swallow this bitter but necessary pill, we don't give up and we set out into the garden with even more energy. We revive the idea of a proper back garden with a garden shed built mainly from pallets, designed by Chris. We are sorry to have to rebuild and relocate the beds we established in the spring. But this time we do it properly and in a way that makes moving and working in the whole garden a lot easier. Work is starting to pick up the pace again since autumn!
September 2021
With renewed energy we discuss with Chris, who explains and shows us what our garden shed could look like. To keep us happy in the garden and to meet our primary biological needs, we agree together to have a compostable toilet built out of pallets in the garden as well. We make you aware of all our plans at parent meetings.
October, November and December 2021
Yes, you read that right, we worked on the garden all autumn, until December, the last time we were here before Christmas was on the 3rd! In these months we were busy preparing the ground for building - after dredging there was a big pile of branches mixed with dirt in the middle - we were tirelessly dismantling the whole pile with pickaxes and hoes! The branches were sorted for composting and the dirt we sifted through a sieve will be used in the raised beds. It was a all really hard work! Some of us were busy building the toilet and endlessly breaking down pallets into planks - we will use these to build raised beds and to fill in the gaps in the pallets for the toilets - to protect us from the wind! We also started to receiving our first donations from parents in December, such as pallets from Tomáš Zima! Yay!
January, February and March 2022
The Czech saying goes: "As you do on New Year's Day, you will do all year round!" That's why we waste no time and jump straight back into the process on the 13th of January! We don't let anything distract us as the vision of a garden shed is so enticing. We practice patience like Zen masters, because the work is repetitive and it seems neverending... Use the pickaxe to dig up the pile... Don't whack yourself in the head... Rake up those branches and burn them... Yeah, you can roast those gummy bears... Yeah, we have to keep going for a little longer... No, we're not going home yet... Yeah, if you throw it in there wet, it's going to smoke a lot! We just love it!
Another parent meeting takes place at the end of February, where we ask for your help and support in an original way – a rap song performed by our students!
March 24th 2022
About the middle of March we received the first help from our parents, Saša and David. They came to help us in the garden - we have to say that thanks to David's strength we FINALLY managed to completely level the plot! PHEW! Saša helped us to plant a big part of the garden with white hyacinths again, so nothing prevented us from inviting you to our first garden festival! We prepared a scavenger hunt for the younger classmates, a ritual to welcome spring for the parents and a take-apart-the-pallet competition.
We are very grateful for all the equipment and supplies you bought, scissors, gloves, tools and plants. Some of you even donated money, and we also made some through selling raffle tickets! Our rap hit worked! We used all of the money to buy materials and equipment for the garden. THANK YOU!
April, May and June 2022
The ground is more or less leveled, the weather is working in our favour, we already have a good amount of pallets (about 20 beautiful pieces came from the Karáseks - in exchange for a steak, a deal we couldn't refuse!), planks from the construction again from Tomáš Zima, as well as granite blocks. We can once again move more towards building our dream shed!
We encourage you, the parents, to help us on the weekends and we are successful again! We were able to organize 3 work Saturdays and only thanks to your direct support we were finally able to start building the shed. Not only that, but you helped us clean some places even more, to plant plants or paint garden furniture. As part of our regular garden visits during school hours, we managed to start our first perennial bed, make raised beds, and paint the pallets with linseed ferm. We are very pleased that the goals we set are starting to come to fruition!
June 2nd 2022
We held a big birthday party for our school and celebrated Children's Day on this day. Many of you volunteered and organised various workshops for the children, a waffle stand for example... yum! The garden hosted all kinds of activities and served its purpose well. Correct, our garden isn't just about tomatoes and strawberries, its also a place where we are always glad to spend time together!
June 14th 2022
This day is probably even more meaningful for us personally though, because our parents and teachers managed to reach this stage in building the garden shed.
We want to thank all of you who helped us, we wouldn't have moved forward at such a fast pace without you. As you can see, the shed has a base from pallets held up by bricks and concrete footings, OSB boards serve as its floor. At this stage we say goodbye to the garden before the holidays, the construction is well underway, strawberries and tomatoes are growing in the raised beds. We are aware that we do not yet have an irrigation system, so we arrange with the nursery to water the plants. In return, the children can pick and taste the crops to their heart's content!
September 2022
The holidays flew by and after we've had a bit of a go at school, we're headed back to the garden for the first time a week before school in the countryside. We can't stop marvelling at the immense power of nature. Where in June there was parched and very choked dirt is now a jungle that has outgrown us all. So our first task is to start cleaning at least the path that leads from the compost heap to the house. We worked like machines, steam was coming out of our ears.
Fortunately, a little miracle happened... no, it wasn't a little magic gnome... One morning Tomáš Zima from Matěj and Dorka and Přemek Hněvkovský from Jenda stopped by for a while. We don't know if we looked so desperate, but that evening (again at the parent meeting) Tomáš Zima offered to mow the garden for us - he immediately arranged with Václav, Tobiáš's dad from Grade 6, and then with Přemek and lo and behold! On Tuesday, September 27th, the lawn was mowed. THANK YOU, GENTLEMEN!
These dads helped us work a lot faster thanks to their quick agreement and willing cooperation. After the childrens' return from school in the countryside we can immediately start mulching, marking out the areas where we don't want weeds and infestations to grow - we cover these with a thick layer of cardboard, a layer of wilted cut greenery and tree bark - if we keep the mulch well maintained, the weeds don't stand a chance. Areas where we want to have a lawn in the future must be maintained by mowing and digging out the roots of infestations and resistant weeds. So much for gardening, but MOST IMPORTANTLY...
By mowing frequently, we have been able to proceed with the construction of our garden house extremely quickly. We hope that we can come together again this time to meet our goal of completing the shed by the end of the calendar year. So, towards the end of September we are sending you, the parents, a call for help through Twigsee, which many of you have answered to our great joy.
October 2022
During October, some of the children from the lower floor started to join our older children, and despite their initial shyness, everything worked out beautifully. We were busy with autumn chores, raking leaves, trimming branches around the fence and generally cleaning and tidying up the garden. On Saturday, October 15th, we finally reunited with many of the parents and thanks to them we were able to continue realizing our dream. Although the weather was not in our favor, all the walls were added to the house during Saturday and the frame for the roofing was constructed.
We didn't forget about the garden itself either. We planted 3 blueberry bushes and added some autumn flowers to one of the flower beds. The new wood shed also took shape and we completed another raised bed as well.
Other children started helping thoroughly clean the area, where we once again built a large working area from pallets. Here we will prepare plants for planting and make or build anything we need. We made the area the garden shed and the preschool look spotless. The same old daredevils then got together on Saturday the 22nd and gave our garden shed a brand new roof. 10x hooray and 100x thank you!
November 2022
We meet twice more in the garden after the autumn holidays. Strangely enough, there is still much to do, the work in the garden simply never ends! Luckily the weather is still good, it doesn't rain, so we don't mind any work. We're still doing maintenance, mulching the paths with wood chips, the raised beds have been enriched with horse manure, the girls have planted lots of spring flower bulbs in all sorts of nooks and crannies - it's going to be beautiful in the spring! Every time we come to the garden, we can't help but marvel at our awesome garden house and almost can't believe it's actually standing! But it's no dream and we're enjoying the reality as much as we can!
We focus on school projects like Halloween and big celebratory Thanksgiving dinner until the end of the year. And of course we can't wait for Christmas. The garden is resting and we say goodbye to it for this calendar year.
January 2023
We didn't have to say goodbye for long though. The weather is extraordinarily warm, so we don't hesitate and visit the garden in January. It's about +10 °C during the day, so why not tak advantage of that? As gardeners we're afraid a bit that some plants might start blossoming too soon and we're actually praying a bit that it gets cold again. But at least we can do some maintenance – we burn old dead wood thats of no use and would just spread mould. The boys bring in more mulch and we upgrade the paths.
February 2023
We can't help ourselves and we have to take advantage of every opportunity to work on the garden. Temperatures at the end of February are sub-zero, but the sun is shining so we set about cleaning up the garden. We start sorting a big pile of material left over from our previous work. We use the pallets to build a simple work area where we will transplant plants, make garden furniture, paint it, etc. Tomáš Zima gave us some beautiful planks from a building site, so we use them for an exclusive floor in the house, and we will be able to handle other materials as well. By rearranging the planks and pallets we disturbed the hibernating spiders (each of which the boys named Kevin) and crickets. Even though the boards were teeming with these animals, the boys Filip, Adam, Loki and Tobiáš managed everything and the garden is now a bit nicer again.
We would once again like to say thank you for the donated material – this time to Přemek Kamenický, who donated pallets and 200 kg of pebbles – we can't wait to decorate our flower beds with them! Thank you!
March 2023
On March 23, we officially kick off another gardening season with a small celebration of spring. The children from upstairs prepared a woodland scavenger hunt inspired by the seasons, and together we planted peas and radishes and roasted marshmallows. The kids from the lower floor came to greet the garden in the afternoon, went on the scavenger hunt (but they said it was too easy :) ), and roasted more marshmallows than sausages. Finally, we christened our awesome garden sculpture with fire. The weather was good, and we all enjoyed the freedom and relaxation.
In the following week we visited the garden only in a small group. We start creating a new mulch path with Máňa, Aiden and Terezka. Heavy rain soon sent us running back inside though.
April 2024
Spring is really lazy this year. At the beginning of April the night temperatures are still below zero (good thing we don't grow apricots, that wouldn't end well) and warm days are still out of sight. We're off to enjoy the cold Easter holidays and on our return we'll be hitting the garden in the regular rhythm of Thursday visits - the upstairs and downstairs kids all together again.
The Window Project 22.4.2023
Another super Saturday! The gods had mercy on us and after days of cloudy skies, cold and rain, they sent us one of the first truly spring days. The plan was to installing new windows, which was boldly taken on by Chris, Tomáš Zima. Roblín students Hugo and Ota. Emča, Dorka, Pepinka, little Betynka and Matěj helped to clean the windows before the installation. The Skondrojanis family also arrived... THANK YOU!
Martina, Peter, their older son Maty and younger son Theo measured, cut and laid the floorboards for us! It's incredible how much was accomplished! There was also some strawberry transplanting, mulching of the strawberry and blueberry bed, the boys played some football. In short, lots of work, but also peace and quiet.
It's been exactly a year since the guys here were leveling the base and now we can eat on the floor and look out the windows :)
Women Power Garden 25.4.2023
It was a beautifully peaceful, but at the same time very work-oriented, girly garden. The girls had the most fun with Chris - a canopy has been added to our shed and the walls are taking shape. Of course, the girls didn't avoid gardening either :). They put soil on the bare spots, sowed grass, and transplanted strawberries into the raised beds.
Even though it was warm, which we were pleased about, we lit the campfire to roast marshamallows and we burnt some apples and carrots as well. We didin't even want to go back to school.
Boys Power Garden 18.5.2023
We were a bit behind in our gardening since our amazing school in the countryside. This Thursday a Chris went to the garden with a group of boys for a change, they bought a load of mulch for the paths. All very relaxed and jolly.
Children's Day preparations 23.5.2023
We are really looking forward to celebrating Children's Day on the 1st of June, but we need to prepare the garden first, especially mow the lawn. We grab the mehcanical and electric lawnmowers and scissors and off we go! Our downstairs friends joined us after a long time as well. And how handy they were!
The best Children's Day 1.6.2023
We are really happy with how it went. We are very happy that so many of you actively participated and took the trouble to carefully prepare activities and workshops for the children. It also warms our hearts that we were able to renovate the garden so successfully for this lovely day, so much so that many of you reflecting how lovely a place it is for such events. The time that many people gave - even on weekends - to the garden and to building the shed is really paying off.
We especially want to thank:
<rt_fela-bold>Andrea Jašková, Soňa Strolená, Lenka Lipenská, Linda Kučerová, Karol Kopecká, Iva Štrbová, Přemek Hněvkovský, Pavel Odehnal and Patrik and Terezka Zindulková<rt_fela-bold>
A special thank you also belongs to Aiden Perera. Aiden loves animals and the zoo and so he, supported by his parents, came up with a complex workshop on the topic of zoos. The smile on your face, when your raffle raised almost all the money you needed to for animal adoption, was priceless. It always reminds us that activities that don't seem to have much to do with school give you big opportunities to grow.