Lessons from Africa 9: How to Make a Keyhole Garden

About This Primary Resource

A Keyhole Garden is an ingenious design that is used all over Africa and can be easily built in any garden. The plants are grown around the outside of a ‘basket’ in the middle where the waste food products go and the water produced from the decomposition waters the plants. This resource includes a step-by-step guide to making a Keyhole Garden and a list of instructions of how to take care of it (and which plants to grow). There is also a Powerpoint presentation that shows the effect a Keyhole Garden had on one school in Africa. This is a great activity for those interested in the Forest School approach and is a low-input way of growing plants in your garden.

This resource has been kindly shared with us by Lessons from Africa, which is the education programme run by the charity Send a Cow. For 25 years Send a Cow have been helping thousands of African families and orphans grow enough food to eat, sell their produce and develop small businesses that last.

If you would like to find out more about Send a Cow, or make a donation to the charity, then please have a look at their website: www.sendacow.org.uk. Lessons from Africa also offer hundreds more resources suitable for Key Stage 2-4, find them all at their website: www.sendacow.org.uk/lessonsfromafrica.