Little Seedlings learn to grow indoors at Dobbies’ Edinburgh store

Free sustainable workshop in February

Dobbies, the UK’s leading garden centre retailer, is hosting a free sustainable workshop on Sunday 6 February in Edinburgh for the Little Seedlings Club to learn how to grow indoors. 

Suitable for children aged 4-10, this workshop will take place in Dobbies’ Edinburgh store and will encourage children to take advantage of the cold winter months and start growing fruit, vegetables and herbs indoors.

Children will learn about what fruit and vegetables can successfully be grown indoors, the best technique for chitting potatoes to prepare for sowing and all the benefits and uses of indoor herbs.

Dobbies will also be educating children on the benefits of growing your own for their health and the planet. Home grown produce creates no plastic waste and also reduces food waste as you only harvest what you need. In addition to this, locally grown vegetables reduce carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Sarah Murray, Partnership and Events Manager said: “At Dobbies we always look for ways to help our customers be sustainable and we’re delighted to be educating and encouraging the next generation of gardeners to use sustainable practices.

“Our gardening club allows children from all backgrounds to come together and connect with one another in a friendly group setting. Learning about the plants in their garden, wildlife and environment, we strive to nurture their minds with fun-filled activities.

“Our Little Seedlings Club is ever-popular and spaces are filled quickly. We’d encourage anyone looking to bring their children along to our Edinburgh store to book in advance to avoid any disappointment.”

Advance booking is required to secure your space for this free to attend event at Dobbies’ Edinburgh store.

For more information on how your little one can take part, visit:

https://www.dobbies.com/events

Edinburgh kids invited to become Little Seedlings Ambassadors

Dobbies, the UK’s leading garden centre retailer, has announced the online relaunch of its much-loved Little Seedlings Club, to support and celebrate National Children’s Gardening Week (29 May – 6 June).

Packed with activities, tutorials and educational content, the Little Seedlings Club is aimed at Edinburgh children aged 4 to 10 years old, and in its refreshed and enhanced online format, will provide plenty of fun gardening and crafting projects.

Dobbies Little Seedlings Club previously ran in the Edinburgh store, but workshops haven’t been able to take place in person since March 2020. The relaunched online format provides a fantastic way for budding young Edinburgh gardeners to learn all about plants, wildlife, the environment and sustainability, while supplying them with an abundance of fun facts and top tips to impress their friends.

Marcus Eyles, Horticultural Director of Dobbies, said: “Our Little Seedlings Club has always been hugely popular in our Edinburgh store, and so we are very pleased to be able to relaunch the club in a virtual format, marking National Children’s Gardening Week.

“At Dobbies, we are passionate about helping communities to enjoy spending time outdoors and get growing, and who could be better than the next generation of gardeners? We hope that the relaunched Little Seedlings Club will educate, inform and inspire a whole new host of young gardeners.”

Available for free on the Dobbies website, Little Seedlings will offer a mix of topical online content, including factsheets, educational guides, activity sheets and suggestions for ways to put green fingers to work, with topics spanning everything from creating bug hotels and DIY seed bombs, to learning about composting, plant lifecycles and the anatomy of flowers, plus an array of weird and wonderful facts.

The new-look Little Seedlings Club will also offer free virtual events, coinciding with Dobbies’ current series of online Expert Events. On Saturday 5 June at 10:30, Dobbies will host ‘Get Gardening with Your Little Seedlings’ – a free, virtual event open to everybody, designed to encourage parents and grandparents to enjoy time in the garden with their little ones.

Dobbies’ Horticultural Director, Marcus Eyles, and Plant Buyer, Nigel Lawton, will provide a pumpkin-planting demonstration, to encourage children to start their own fruit or vegetable patch at home. Alongside this, there’ll be interactive challenges and fun facts, to get children out in the garden and help them to understand more about the natural world around them.

As well as this, Dobbies is launching a campaign to find Ambassadors for Little Seedlings, open to children across Edinburgh.

The campaign will find the faces of the Little Seedlings Club, who will then have the opportunity to provide their own blogs about gardening for Dobbies customers to enjoy, as well as appearing in Dobbies’ social media campaigns with photos of their gardening progress.

Children can apply to become a Little Seedlings Ambassador at https://www.dobbies.com/little-seedlings-ambassadors

For more information on Little Seedlings: https://www.dobbies.com/little-seedlings

For the virtual event: https://www.dobbies.com/events

For National Children’s Gardening Week activity: https://www.dobbies.com/little-seedlings-activities/gardening-week