NCGW Things to do

Grow a vegetable picture

Grow edible plants into a work of art.

Here’s what you’ll need!

Shopping list for your local garden centre:

A mixture of big, medium and small edible plants with different coloured leaves, flowers or fruit
Multi-purpose compost

Horticultural sharp sand

Plant food

A spade or trowel

A watering can

Tip – Plants like lettuce, basil, rocket,
swiss chard and salads can be good
for background colours of your painting.
Bigger plants like chillis, tomatoes,
peppers and courgettes can be good
for main parts of your painting.

Instructions:

Pick an area that gets good sunlight for your canvas in which to grow your picture.
Dig some compost into the area that makes up your canvas, then rake the soil so it’s nice and fine.
Divide your canvas into sections using your sand. Go wild with the patterns you ‘draw’, or mark out a picture.
Plant different types of edible plant into the different sections of your canvas. Try using contrasting colours of leaves, fruit and flowers for the different sections. When the plants grow, they’ll be the ‘colouring in’ of the sections of your picture.
Give the plants a good watering, and make sure they don’t dry out.
Over a few weeks you should start to see your picture come to life. Better still, you’ll be able to pick your picture and eat it!

Download this activity sheet (PDF)
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