In the Woods Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Secret Garden Outdoor Nursery

I wonder if any of you may have upturned a Secret Garden backpack or waterproof lately and, (surprise!) sent a cache of horse chestnut seeds bouncing merrily across the floor?

Conker collection time is here!

These seasonal treasures that gleam so richly and fit so perfectly into a little fist are irresistible, and carry with them many claims of varying credibility, such as:

Keeping a supply in the house will deter spiders.

The ‘horse’ element of the name refers to the supposed medicinal quality of the flowers and seeds, said to prevent horses from coughing.

They are very bitter and will taste horrible if you try to eat them. This is, I’m afraid, definitely true. Conkers contain a chemical called aesculin which is by all accounts disgusting and perhaps not surprisingly, slightly poisonous as well.

Most famously of course, conkers are the main components of the game ‘Conkers,’ in which opposing players attempt to smash each other’s conker to bits, with uproariously fibrous results.

Who will be the conkerer? (Sorry…) It remains to be seen…or does it?

Our far away friends on the Isle of Wight take the enterprising biscuit when it comes to conkers. Not only was the first recorded game of Conkers held there in 1848, look at what these clever folk have more recently discovered:

https://diaryofafirstchild.com/2020/11/13/how-to-make-conker-soap/

Handwashing in the woods doesn’t get much more ‘woods’ than that! Maybe we could give it a try?

In our Spiral curriculum, the Horse Chestnut symbol represents ‘recognising and appreciating differences and similarities between people’.

This is the stage of the year when the children have had time to get to know one another, forge new friendships and deepen existing ones.

We see them communicating and collaborating, being open to letting others show and share who they are, celebrating the familiar but also engaging with and accepting the new.

Through this openness and acceptance the children are growing in their sense of community and belonging.

Mazz Brown, Woods Practitioner

…it’s such a magical month, when the only thing that stays the same is the constant change. Petals fall along the row, while our old friend the cherry tree tries on its autumn colours, a few leaves at a time.

‘Hello cherry tree, cherry cherry cherry tree, hello cherry tree, make apple juice for me?’

(Play begins at once, of course. Between the park and here we witness errant monkeys, hungry puppies and a party-organising committee overcome a major diplomatic crisis.)

On the lane the silver dollars glimmer, ethereal amongst nettles grey from dust. Tines of cow parsley parched and bleached to hay are snapped and held aloft like guiding torches snuffed of flame. Onward!

The last of the ladybirds have landed on bramble leaves, not hiding well enough to herald small fingers to the final plump berries that fuel our walk. When the breeze picks up we watch the clouds barrow across the sky above the farmer’s field, our bow to shoot from, where to today?

The answer is, most often: anywhere! Everything still so mild and kind, our many sites beckon, their irregular patchwork an open invitation to explore.

We have days sunlit and windless at Crystal Gnome Den, the bright beech light a clean and green illumination under whose sieve we play, safely held, on ground drained and dried through a long summer.

We have days cocooned in the coolness of the Moonden, air rich with damp, the children take three laps of the leafpile racetrack before returning with crooked fingers of dried pine to help feed our hissing fire.

Chalked faces dart from trunk to trunk, gathering props. Interactions are glowing with good humour.

‘You’re a silly!’

‘Yes I am!’

‘Where’s that smile?’

‘In my tummy.’

Above the buzzard loops a loop. The sound it makes, a hula-hoop. Spiders ascend and descend trees on a glistening highway of slug trails. Mushrooms bloom on logs cake-soft from rot.

Secretly, red squirrels flick in golden commas through the pines, always in peripheral. The woods are as full as lungs.

Our end of day is still played out in brightness, when it’s lovely to be able to see the joyful smiles of greeting, to show off the treasures found throughout the day without the need of artificial light.

There’s time to send the swings soaring again, to shrug off bags and kick off shoes, to run, free through the warm grass, before home.

Mazz Brown (September 2021)