Earth Friends 03 – Green Garden

Holly Webb's Earth Friends Green Garden is a school friendship story for 7 year olds about a girl who's told her best idea was copied.

What happens

Poppy loves art. She makes her own remedies with essential oils and dyes the underneath of her hair blue and green (where the teachers won't spot it).

Her class watches a video from a TV gardener. There's a competition to design a school garden, and the winners get their garden built on television!

Poppy isn't a gardening person. But she stays up far too late drawing something beautiful. It's a garden for all five senses, laid out like an old monastery herb garden. There's a hedge shaped like a butterfly, a wildflower patch for the bees and a hole in the fence for hedgehogs. The paths are wide enough for a wheelchair.

Then Ali, the class meanie, takes one look and says Poppy copied it out of a book.

Poppy did get the idea from a picture. Does that make it cheating? She starts to think it might, and she throws her design in the bin.

What follows is a really honest look at how a bad day can spiral. Poppy's tired and upset. Her friends start whispering and disappearing at lunch. She's sure they're laughing at her too.

They aren't. But Poppy doesn't know that. It's a feeling lots of children will recognise.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

At one point Poppy is so miserable that she walks out of school on her own. Nobody stops her, and she ends up alone in town. It's handled sensibly, with a grown-up who finds her and a very cross phone call from Mum. Still, it could be worth a chat afterwards if your reader has ever felt like running off.

There's plenty to love besides. Izzy is full of facts about bees and hedgehogs. Emily's little sister might have eaten a snail. It's the third Earth Friends book, but new readers will pick up who's who very quickly.

What to read next

It suits a reader who cares about nature and likes friendships with real ups and downs. If they'd like to meet the four friends at the very beginning, Fair Fashion is where Maya's class project starts it all.