The Family Kitchen Garden

Five years ago Karen Liebreich, Jutta Wagner, Annette Wendland and others began to restore the neglected seventeenth-century kitchen garden at Chiswick in west London, bringing in hundreds of local schoolchildren to work and learn and garden and eat. This book is the fruit of that experience. With the emphasis on what will be fun to grow and useful for a family, it provides clear instructions on growing vegetables, fruit, herbs and cutting flowers, and month-by-month advice on what to do when. It notes 'child-friendly' vegetables such as potatoes (children enjoy searching in the soil for potato 'treasure') and peas (the seeds are large enough to handle easily) and gives tips on approaching gardening activities with children. There are also recipes using homegrown fruit and veg that kids (as well as adults) will want to make and eat - from oriental summer rolls and homemade ketchup to parsnip crisps and fruit ice lollies - and projects that are accessible to the whole family, such as building a ladybird nesting house and weaving a willow wigwam for climbing plants.