Garden gems

National Gardening Week (28 April – 3 May) brought a burst of colour and creativity to The Art Room on Thursday as our young artists transformed paper and clay into miniature worlds that bloomed with detail and imagination!

This week’s project combined drawing, paper construction, and clay modelling to build vibrant garden scenes from the ground up. Starting with a paper backdrop, the children designed their own corner of a garden, carefully considering scale and viewpoint as they filled their sheets with colourful, horticultural features such as flowers, vegetables, grasses, stones, leaves and toadstools. Using skills developed in previous sessions, they brought their artworks to life with 3D paper elements like blades of grass and delicate blossoms secured in place with folded tabs and woven paper ‘springs’.

To complete their garden habitats, each child carefully sculpted a snail from air dry clay, adding a charming inhabitant to their lush, handcrafted landscapes. Once dry, the children can choose to add colour to their snails with pens or paint, however, the tiny details scored into the clay’s surface with modelling tools during the session ensured every spiralling model was full of character and animation.

There was a lot for the children to consider in this week’s activity and we were so impressed with their perseverance in following the various steps needed to complete each component and the creativity they used to realise their vision for each imaginative garden plot.