From Friday August 2^nd, visitors to Chiswick House Kitchen Garden can take part in a free, nature-centred activity trail, designed for children and adults to enjoy together.

Hand-illustrated trail booklets, created by local artist Jaixia Blue and generously funded by Arts Council England, encourage children to engage with insect life in the garden, finding out about the importance of pollinators, and discovering some of the different flower, fruit and vegetable sections of the garden.

After starting the trail with a game of “Flower Bingo”, participants can look for bumblebees and black fly (both important pollinators), take time out to relax and find stillness in the garden’s beautiful meadow, and finally visit the edible Tea Garden to pick a small number of flowers of their own to take home and press.

The “Flower Feast” trail will be available to take part in throughout the summer.

Why the Chiswick House Kitchen Garden is the perfect place to find out more about invertebrates

Dating back to the 17th-century, the walled Kitchen Garden at Chiswick House is home to a rich array of flowers, fruit and vegetables, grown using organic principles and tended to by staff, volunteers and members of the local community.

It’s also an ideal place for children to find out more about invertebrates and the importance of biodiversity, thanks to the innovative ways the Kitchen Garden team work with nature, rather than against it.

For example, while traditional gardening and food production methods often treat insects as something of a menace, eradicating them with environmentally-damaging pesticides, our gardeners employ “no kill” methods instead.

One of these is to grow sacrificial companion plants like nasturtium next to food crops. The gardeners find that creatures like aphids and caterpillars that would otherwise feed on the growing vegetables are drawn to the nasturtium instead, thereby minimising their impact on the crops.

The Chiswick House team also use an innovative “no dig” method, to benefit soil health and structure and improve the garden’s biodiversity.

Traditional digging techniques can prove surprisingly harmful, destroying vital fungal networks, obliterating drainage channels created by worms, and releasing carbon that would otherwise be trapped in the earth.

In contrast, “no dig” methods create soil that contains more beneficial plant nutrients, better able to support the microbes, worms and insects that live within it.

Finally, the garden is also home to a number of “habitat stacks”, made from logs and designed to provide shelter and warm spaces for animals like beetles and centipedes.

Combined, these practices have helped create a truly biodiverse space, home to nectar-drinking bees, butterflies and moths, as well as flies, spiders, ladybirds and woodlice.

Pay us a visit – and let us know what you can spot!

Rosie Fyles, Head of Gardens at Chiswick House & Gardens, said:

“From our no dig policy, to no-kill pest control methods, we’re proud to do things differently in the Chiswick House Kitchen Garden. The environmentally-friendly methods we employ here have helped make the garden a haven for nature and people, an important growing space and a valuable community resource.

“We hope that this year’s garden trail inspires you to take time to enjoy the garden, discover the fascinating invertebrates that can be found here, and find out more about how the right gardening methods can boost biodiversity and help protect wildlife, working with nature rather than against it.”

• Pick up a free trail booklet, magnifying glass and crayons at the Chiswick House Kitchen Garden, open Thursday to Sunday from 10.30am to 3.30pm. Entry to the Kitchen Garden is free.
• Flower Feast: A Kitchen Garden Trail, by artist Jaixia Blue, is one of two food-themed art projects funded this year by Arts Council England. Find out more here.