Our Dragonfly Garden – created with the children of Alverton School is now officially open!
Daisy and Rich from the Gardeners’ House spent six weeks of the last school year working with children from Alverton School, learning about everything a dragonfly needs to be happy. The children from the nursery and reception class came to find out more about these fascinating creatures, and to help us design a dragonfly habitat in Morrab Gardens.
These creatures live under the water most of their lives and then emerge to zoom around eating other small animals. The children needed to learn a lot about the world of dragonflies, and and they did this through becoming the insects and arthropods, crustaceons and mollusks!
They became larvae living in a pond, crawling out and then popping out of their skins to become adults. They were adult dragonflies laying eggs, tiny slugs slithering underground through mycorrhizal fungi, woodlice curling up to sleep under leaf litter.
This was all through the power of imagination plus a few handy props, like balls, a sheet of bubblewrap and yoga mats. Rich also composed a song specifically for this project to teach them all about dragonflies!
At the end of the six weeks we asked them to draw a dragonfly – which we had also asked them to do on the first day – and had beautiful before and after drawings showing all the things they had remembered, such as the fact they have two really big eyes.
All their learning evolved into a garden design, where the children chose photographs and drawings of plants to stick in the garden in places they liked. They added other essential details such as slug homes and clouds passing by the pond.This was turned into a clear and scaled-up garden plan, the plants were sown and collected and grown on and the beds were marked out and dug over.
The garden was finished in July 2026. There are beds with different conditions – dry, boggy, rotting wood, grasses – with areas left for autumn sowing of wild flowers. Two ponds have been installed with a variety of pond plants and one with a tiny solar fountain. The garden is in the shape of a dragonfly – the ponds are its eyes, a long log body and garden bed wings!
We have been watering and watering and watering – and even in this heat the plants have settled in very well.
The Dragonfly Garden has also had an official opening. We have had a whole school assembly (complete with the dragonfly song!) and a garden opening ceremony at the Alverton school summer fair for all the children and their parents/carers. The children were very excited at seeing it all finished after all their work on it. And as we were resting in the shade after watering a MASSIVE golden dragonfly zoomed past. We think it was checking out the garden to tell its friends!
This garden will grow and develop over the years. The ponds are small and safe and easy to maintain, it’s all contained and easy for the children to watch over. It was a real delight to work with Alverton on this project and all their lovely, bright, engaged children.
We will be looking for more schools to work with in the coming academic year – please let us know if you are working at a school who may like to experience a bit of the Gardeners House magic!
