Monday 30 July 2018

"Errol's Garden" by Gillian Hibbs (Child's Play)

Here's a book that took me right back to my childhood, and also made both of us think how lucky we are to have green spaces around us nowadays...
I grew up in London in a fairly horrible tower block and always wondered what it would be like to be able to grow a garden. We had a tiny balcony which wouldn't have had enough space on it to grow a single tomato plant.

So we loved the way "Errol's Garden" began, with Errol being a green-fingered towerblock dweller - slowly but surely filling up all the space in his flat with his plants and flowers

Errol dreams of a way of creating an amazing garden - and with a little help from all his friends and neighbours also living in the towerblock, they decide to create an amazing green space full of wondrous flora right there on the roof of their building.

The sense of diversity, community and the celebration of growing things and reaping the rewards (nothing tastes better than your own home grown vegetables and fruit) really comes across from every single page of Gillian's wonderful book.

Errol is such an inspirational character too, drumming up support for his rooftop garden in a charming and polite way.

Such a delicious little story this, we love that it may well inspire the next generation of little gardeners to think about how they can create their own flower or veg patches, or even perhaps engage with their own communities to make very special green spaces.

C's best bit: Harvesting tasty veg and munching on home grown carrots.

Daddy's favourite bit: Such a brilliant and inspirational book, full of a lovely sense of diversity and community. Beautifully told and illustrated, it's sublime stuff again from Child's Play.

"Errol's Garden" by Gillian Hibbs is out now, published by Child's Play (kindly supplied for review).