Useful equipment for school gardening

Information sheet

Here is a guide to the basic equipment that it is useful to have in school gardens

  • School term: All year round
  • Level of experience: No experience needed
  • Subject(s):

Essentials

  • Gardening gloves for adults and children in various sizes
  • Colourful plastic trugs or buckets
  • Watering cans with watering rose
  • Compost bins
  • Pots and trays
  • Cups or small containers for seed distribution
  • String and scissors
  • Old or cheap shower curtains or tarpaulins to cover areas or keep them clean
  • Wheelbarrow
  • Hand trowels and forks
  • Child size rakes, spades and forks. Use border or adult size tools if pupils are older
  • Old dust pan bushes or dish washing brushes to clean tools etc

Very useful

  • Propagators
  • Adult-size spade, fork, rake, hand tools, secateurs and hoe for helpers
  • Fleece/netting/plastic sheet and supports (hoops) for making tunnels (cloches)
  • Mypex (weed suppressant)
  • Plastic boxes in lots of different sizes
  • Leaf rakes (child-size)
  • Cold frame or plastic greenhouse (to harden plants off in)
  • Old gardening magazines and seed catalogues or reference books

Tool & equipment storage

  • Before you buy or have gathered all your tools and equipment it is worth considering where and how you are going to store them
  • Do you have room or money for a shed or is there an existing storeroom that could be used? This should be clean and dry to stop the tools rusting
  • Teach your pupils to always put their tools away clean- so they last longer and they are nice for the next pupils to use
  • Discard any tools that are broken or unsafe.
  • It may be useful to gather old bins or buckets to store the tools upright. Consider making racks or fix hooks to the shed walls to hang the tools. Mark the different hooks for each type of tool
  • Consider tool safety at all times and think about who will have access to the tools & storage area

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