Garden nature to engage children

Hi everyone, here I am after two weeks' absence as I went through the dubious pleasure of moving house. NOW I can really get going on the big garden restoration programme ahead of me.

But, for today, as I sit among a mountain of unopened boxes, I thought I'd just share a couple of photos of leaves from the last few weeks.

The reason for such a seemingly mundane subject is that one of the things that has been playing around in my mind is how to engage children with nature. I was fortunate to grow up in a village where there wasn't even a play area so the fields, woods and streams were my playground.

A love of birds came later (I was maybe about 10). Before that came a love of Lions, Tigers, Cheetahs and particularly the 'forgotten' wild cats of the world such as Ocelots and Jaguarundis (yes, such a thing actually exists).

But before that I remember just a general fascination with everything from butterflies to leaf shapes in and around my childhood garden.

My new garden has some of the more unusual leaf shapes, such as this:

It's a Ginko, the most primitive of trees. I also have this:

It's the Tulip Tree, Liriodendron, from North America, with I think the most curious shaped leaf.

While this was the glory of an autumn Acer at RSPB The Lodge at the end of November:

It is simple things like this that I think can all help fill children with a sense of connection and wonder with the natural world, as well as the birds, bees and beetles. Doing that through gardens and urban spaces is surely going to be ever more important.

What do you think?