Eva Lee

Eva is Tree Guardian for a long row of trees in Elsinore Road. Luckily, it’s next to Kilmorie Primary School, one of a dozen or so schools in the STfL’s School Trees Project. She explains, “At our school each year-group adopted a particular tree and gave it a name. Desmond Tutu once lived nearby, so we have our ‘Tutu tree’, ‘Groot’ (from the Marvel film Galaxy of the Guardians, ta-da!) ‘Barko Blossom’, ‘Woody’, and ‘Lady Butterfrog’. The children help to water their trees for the crucial first two years from planting.”

Eva met me at the school where she has the very unusual role of School Gardener. She bubbles with ideas and seems to do much more than one thing at a time. She says “I got involved with the school gardens as a parent. The short story is ten years later, thanks to unstinting support from the head teacher, the governors, the parents, and the local council, I’m responsible for creating spaces where the children can learn about nature and plants. I got everything I know about planting from Gardeners World. And other parents. Collaboration is the name of the game.”

“Year Two children study trees so I'm very interested in the seventy trees we have in the school itself. Our special ones are Japanese larch, almond and a lovely avenue of Japanese crab apple. I am trying to grow mini trees so that the children can bring specimens into the classrooms. We also have oak, birch, field maple, hazelnut and hornbeam in our Wild Garden. Younger children are encouraged to engage in adventurous play in our Wild Garden. This prepares them for off-site forest school activities which they do when they are older. We also want the planting to encourage wildlife. Children really engage with the many creatures we find in our gardens”.

“Gardening’s quite a challenge in a space where children play, but it’s so worth it when it has purpose. I want children to see and understand growth, so I'm careful to combine annuals with perennials, I particularly like self-seeding plants. I’m always trying to build up supplies of seedpods and interesting plants that children can learn from eg poppies, marigolds and sunflowers. Also, I like to encourage the plants that are already there, to maintain and make use of what we have. I’m into volume, dense planting, longevity. Someone told me once I have quite a bushy style of gardening and I liked that!