Future Gardeners Forum 2025
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Wednesday 12th March
11am on Zoom
Attending the Forum is completely free - book your spot here
We have six speakers lined up to share their experience and top tips. Each aims to encourage, teach and engage with children in the garden. If you would like to garden with children and you are not sure where to start, then this is for you. Each speaker will be introduced by Charles, they will share details of their garden and then we open up to a Q&A session.
This years speakers
Alby Jones
the No Dig Kid
I am Alby Jones, the No Dig Kid, and I’m 11 years old. I have a passion for gardening using the no-dig method which I learnt from Charles Dowding. I taught myself all I needed to know using Charles Dowding’s videos, newsletters and books to turn my back garden into a haven for fruit and vegetable growing. Since then, I have also acquired an allotment site to extend my growing space and enjoy sharing surplus produce with my family and friends. My other passion is teaching and inspiring others to grow food, especially children, as it is a vital life skill. My highlights so far include meeting Charles in person and visiting Homeacres during the open day last year.
Beth Rochford
ROOTZUP, Thames Ditton, Surrey
Inspired by Future Gardeners Forum, RootzUp is a not for profit set up by Beth Rochford to get people, primarly Children (where it all starts) experience of gardening, empowering them to boost their wellbeing and nature through growing. RootzUp is currently based in a community garden created by Beth at Vital Village Hub in Thames Ditton, Surrey. Through a weekly afterschool gardening club and local community events Beth has engaged 120 children aged 4-11. To love soil, stroke a centipede, plant out their own seedling and get calm and creative with nature. Alongside RootzUp, Beth has just taken on a new role of Communities Gardener for the Charity Historic Royal Palaces creating a programme of community outreach gardening within the formal gardens and parkland at Hampton Court Palace, specifically for children and adults who may experience multiple barriers to accessing such green spaces.
Karen Waterston -
School in Teradell, Catalunya
I'm from Scotland and I'm an English language teacher. I've spent most of my life teaching and training teachers around the world and dabbled in gardening while working in Sri Lanka, a place where things grow very easily. In 2020, my husband and I arrived in the small town of Taradell, Catalunya, Spain in 2020. I became a pandemic gardener to keep me sane and discovered my love for growing! In 2002 I connected with the local high school and began a project to integrate English and gardening with first year students. The school already had a garden space that had been unused for several years so I spent the summer getting ready for the school year. I planned an outline of a syllabus, read a lot, planted a lot of seeds and in September 2022 we began. It's a voluntary project with limited resources so most of the materials have been found locally, donations from friends with some hard labour from the kids, myself and some willing friends. We are now in our third year and we've all learnt a lot!
instagram.com/a_garden_of_ideas
Helen Cross
Grow, Cook, Inspire - School in south Glasgow
Helen Cross, Scottish writer and presenter and school gardening champion, published her first book Grow, Cook, Inspire in April 2022. The mother of three who was born and raised on a farm on the south west coast of Scotland knows first hand the power of gardening and the benefits it can have for our mental and physical wellbeing. But she also recognises that it shouldn't just be added extra, a nice thing to do or a tick box in our education system. She strongly advocates for the need for horticulture and outdoor learning to be integrated into the existing curriculum, for staff to be supported or even better horticultural educators employed to create sustainable school gardening projects that will have a long lasting legacy for the school and the wider communities the schools exist in. Helen currently voluntarily leads gardening and horticultural activity in a school on the south side of Glasgow which has 700 pupils in it, while also working as in the world of media.
instagram.com/grow_cook_inspire
Tom Houghton
The Community Growers - Boston town, Lincolnshire
My Name is Tom Houghton, 38yrs old. I own a 3 acre market garden, set in the heart of Boston town, Lincolnshire. The garden is made up of a mixed species heritage fruit orchard, along with 54 No Dig beds, a large poly tunnel and two recently restored traditional dutch light glasshouses. We operate as a CIC, The Community Growers, with the aim of supporting and educating our local community through the growing fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers.
From our busy and productive market garden we host a weekly children’s gardening club with 24 pupils from a local primary school, Tower Road Academy. We also host a weekly adult gardening club for members of our local community to promote improvements in mental health and wellbeing. Due to the demand of our current weekday children's club we will soon be launching a Saturday morning and school holiday gardening club, giving even more children an opportunity to get out into our garden!'
instagram.com/thecommunitygrowers_cic
instagram.com/thebostonmarketgarden
Hannah & Ross
Letting Grow - London
Hannah Niskanen and Ross Walker are a husband and wife team who co-founded Letting Grow 4 years ago with the goal of creating accessible green spaces for Londoners. Our flagship school is Ealing Alternative Provision, a pupil referral unit in West London. We are working with students from year 7 to A-level creating an allotment to grow fruit and veg that is used by the canteen.
We curate workshops, courses and away days for inner city schools and urban communities. Our aim is to improve people’s connection to nature.
We’ve turned unused areas in playgrounds into thriving allotments, grown fruit and veg for school kitchens and also run a tree planting initiative called “Forest Makers”
Creating and expanding accessible green spaces is at the heart of what we do. Nature has no walls.
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