Drum roll please……..it’s one year since I started #blogging

and last week I hit 1000 followers and over 10,000 views!

I’ve had the most brilliant year – here’s some month by month highlights…….

December 2015

The gardening gang put the school garden to bed for the winter, I helped out at tree dressing day with Operation Farm and I finished school for the Christmas holidays. Probably the gardening highlight of the year was spending a dream day working at Chatsworth House

At Chatsworth with Head Gardener, Steve Porter

gardening gang

and yes, I got to do this!

January 2015

Winterwatch was on TV and I had a bit of wildlife to report back on too, when I visited Brockholes nature reserve. I was invited to speak at Parliament about why I love gardening and how I could get more children to get involved in horticulture and think about it as a career

Giving a speech at the Houses of Parliament

Plant a shrub with help from Buster

Here’s my Parliament speech

February

We visited Hulme Community Garden Centre to buy some seed potatoes, during half-term me and my mum visited Dunham Massey and despite the icy weather, spring flowers were just popping through. My Grandma Barbara wrote a guest post and I also helped do some cutting back and winter maintenance in her garden

March

We had some really heavy snow, which meant school was shut – win win! Three great gardeners wrote guest posts – Glossop gardener, Steve, my gardening teacher, Sarah and the Great Chelsea Challenge Winner, Sean Murray. I helped Operation Farm plant an orchard for Mossley, you can watch the video here and I took part in a kids cookery enterprise – multi talented me!

Planting a community orchard

Planting at school

Me and Sarah at RHS Harlow Carr

April

Me and the gang were busy in the school garden and my friend Joan, wrote about how busy she was in the garden too. We spent the first Easter week in Wales, where I spotted some wonderful Welsh wildlife! During the second Easter week, I helped my Grandma Brenda in her garden and I visited RHS Garden Harlow Carr

May

May was a really busy month both in the school and home garden, where amongst other things I planted some herbs in an old colander. It was time to take my SAT’s at school and believe me, they were ‘well hard’. But I was rewarded when they were over, when I went to RHS Chelsea Flower Show  – it was absolutely fantastic and that post got the most hits to the blog in one day……

332 views in 1 day – wow!!! 

I also had my first filming session in the Blue Peter Garden with Lindsay and it was #awesome. The clip isn’t available anymore, but the internet clip I filmed is – click here to watch it

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June

I really enjoyed the vintage cycling festival, Eroica and a holiday in Spain, where I saw plants and wildlife that I’d never seen before. At home, our garden looked like a jungle and we started to harvest some fruit and veg

A beetle playing dead

July

The end of an era as I finished primary school for good, Sarah, my gardening teacher left that day too, so it was all change for both of us. I went to 2 RHS Flower Shows – Tatton and Hampton Court, where I was a junior reporter for First News – get me!

my gardening teacher, Sarah

buffet on a wheelbarrow

Butterfly pretending it’s an earring!

Junior Jounalist for First News at RHS Hampton Court

August

We spent the first 2 weeks camping in Dorset, where we visited RSPB Arne (Arne later featured on Autumnwatch) for some awesome wildlife spotting. During this time a clip of me planting a crab apple tree for Blue Peter was aired. You can watch an internet clip of the BP veg patch update here

September

I reported back from Abbotsbury Swannery & Sub-tropical Gardens, we said goodbye to summer and hello to autumn. I had the honour of being a judge and workshop leader at the local horticulture show and I wrote a blog about my role as RHS Young Ambassador

Me and Betty Boo !

October

What a busy month I had – early in the month I met the other RHS Ambassadors at a special lunch, where we also had a private tour of the Capability Brown Exhibition at Lindley library. I helped raise awareness of #WildAboutGardens week, which this year had a special focus on bats. I filmed for Blue Peter, helping them to put the garden to bed and whilst I was there I heard I was Kids Blog Club Star of the Week, I was #WellChuffed

November

and finally this month has been fab too, with a blog post about my visit to the RHS Laboratory at RHS Garden Wisley. The next day I had a wildlife spectacle at Bushy Park , where I watched rutting red deer. Check out the picture of a pressed picture – my own little bit of #HerbariumHistory

Preparing the live specimen pressing

The blog has helped me make new friends from all over the world, who are interested in similar things to me – it’s great to know there’s lots of young bloggers out there who share my passion for the environment, gardening, wildlife and nature.

As always there’s lots of people to thank, but I’ll keep it simple…..to Sarah, my gardening teacher, none of this would have happened without you. To Alana, my RHS bestie for working so hard on the campaign and helping with my Ambassadorship (and for loving Harry Potter and Dr Who too!!!).

Finally, to my Mum & Dad for taking me to amazing places, being my personal assistant (!!) and generally being awesome.

I’ll leave you with my new logo – funky ‘innit !