It’s nearly 2 years since my gardening teacher, Sarah Hunter nominated me for the RHS Young School Gardener of the Year and thank goodness she did; winning the award has changed my life! Here’s my award winning video – I’d encourage anyone to enter the competition, you can nominate your teacher too. Find out more here

When I was shortlisted I was sent a video camera to film the short clip about school gardening. I’ve since become obsessed with filming stuff and I often make my own adventure films at home.

School Gardening Club

The weather was dry for our third gardening club of the year so we were able to get on with lots of jobs. The main one was to move the freshly rotted compost to the rockery ready for planting. Green waste from the kitchen is placed in our large compost area every day, but sometimes plastic finds it’s way into the bin, so we took it in turns to check before moving it in the the wheelbarrow over to the new rockery area. Later we planted bulbs in that space and next week Mrs Hunter has some more plants, it’s already taking shape and looks great. We also used some loppers on the buddleia to cut it back. I love gardening club, the time flies by.

Home Gardening

Last weekend we were covered in a blanket of snow, this weekend the sun has been out and it has really felt like spring. I’ve seen my first bat of the year at the front of the house and my Dad saw a bumble bee too. I’ve been in the top garden, helping my Dad sort the garden out following the heavy snowfall . Here I am rescuing a pond plant that fell deep into the pond during bad weather.

Here I am in the treehouse, cutting back the ivy.

Filming at home

I invited my mates round to make our own James Bond movie in the garden. We put loads of paper on the table and wrote all our ideas down for the:

• Movie title – ‘Hit ‘n’ Run’
• Script/screenplay using a storyboard and scene numbers
• Actors – who was playing what – I was James Bond of course
• Roles we each had behind the scenes – Producer, Director, etc.. We took turns to be the camera man
• We used a phone camera for slo-mo and time lapse and a video camera for other footage
• We looked round the house for props and then used the garden and yard for all the scenes. My mate had a great idea of filming down a pipe to create the opening sequence
• We now need to edit and save the film and perhaps add music. But I think that’s a big job – I’ll ask my Mum!

It turned into a James Bond Weekend as I watched the latest film on a sleepover at my Aunty Caroline and Uncle Andy’s house, it was brill !

Homework

I’ve also been sorting my ‘fairground attraction’ homework out, making it more stable and adding lights. It’s nearly finished and I wish it was real !

Hope you have a nice week. Thanks to Sean Murray for his guest blog; this week’s guest blog is from Glossop Gardener, Steve.