Jelly-crafting with Bompas & Parr

At LoLA, we get so excited about each new box that we always think it may be “the best box yet!”. This month, working with Bompas & Parr, was a special high. We couldn’t have had more fun creating the jelly projects together! So maybe this is actually our best box yet!

Bompas & Parr call themselves ‘a multi-sensory experience design’ practice and are delightfully creative with food and the senses. Their Multi-Sensory Fireworks display for London on New Year’s Eve in 2013 really put them on the map. Different smells were released as different coloured fireworks exploded spectacularly in the air.

They also created Alcoholic Architecture, an inhabitable cloud of gin and tonic, and founded the British Museum of Food, the world’s first cultural institution exclusively dedicated to food and drink. They continue to break boundaries, as you can see from their World’s First Vegan Suite at the London Hilton Bankside.

We particularly love their book, ‘Jelly with Bompas and Parr’, where their architectural jelly is so special it should win awards! So go get wobbly with the LoLA Fabulous Food box and its jelly-inspired activities! 

Alara and Selina

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Places to go out with children

As the leaves start to change colour, what a lovely opportunity to spend time outdoors. Perhaps the most famous British venue for trees is Kew Gardens, just outside London, and its country cousin, Wakehurst, which is not far from Gatwick airport. Kew has recently opened its doors to a new ‘Children’s Garden’, a wonderful area for kids of all ages to play under the shade of a huge tree! But all across the country there are fantastic botanical gardens in a number of cities – including Belfast, Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Sheffield. We are truly a nation of great gardens…and great gardeners!!

We would also recommend a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall. It recommends that we all plant native trees in our gardens. There are all sorts of reasons why… not least, to help absorb carbon from the atmosphere – crucial if we want to reduce global warming! Check out their choices, from crab apples to willow trees, and go see what they have created in a couple of huge biomes nestling in a crater the size of 30 football pitches! And while you’re down there be sure to visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan, a magical rediscovered Victorian garden, also in Cornwall. And by the way, plans are well advanced to open another Eden Project, on the edge of Morecambe Bay in the north of England. Exciting stuff.

Special attractions in London include The Horniman Museum which offers a fantastic nature trail introducing visitors to the wonderful plants and animals in the area. For a more manicured walk, try Frieze Sculpture in Regents Park (ends 6th October). It has large pieces to admire and a family trail to keep little ones engaged. The Garden Museum in Lambeth has a wonderful children’s programme of workshops alongside their ongoing exhibition “What to look for in a garden; a Ladybooks exhibition” (ends October 27th).

Finally, why not take the National Trust’s advice and find a great place to climb a tree..?! Jessica, quoted below, loved the Nookta tree at Wallington which is now 115 years old and 45 feet tall!

‘When I climbed up and looked down, everyone else looked like mice. They were so small. I liked the fact that you could hide and see the house from inside the tree.’ 

Jessica, age 8.

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Art Project: Tree as an easel

Now we’re going to take the idea of leaf and bark rubbings to another level! Go outside and find a nice big tree and, using lots of strong duct tape, stick a big piece of paper straight onto it. Squeeze some paints into a palette (or onto a piece of cardboard) and start to paint. Be inspired by your tree, look at it carefully, listen to the breeze rustling through its leaves…! Then see what happens when you use your chalk pastels to get some beautiful bark rubbings.

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Looking at Mondrian

One of our featured artists in the Tremendous Trees box is Mondrian. Most famous for his primary colours and sharp lines, he also experimented by simplifying the shapes of trees. The trunks and branches that he painted become a network of horizontal and vertical lines. Mondrian’s awe of trees grew out of his earlier landscape painting. Nature was his inspiration, but he kept true to his theories of abstraction: “I want to come as close as possible to the truth, and abstract everything from that until I reach the foundation of things.” (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/mondrian-the-tree-a-t02211)

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LoLA at Daylesford Harvest Festival

 “With a bountiful variety of crops at their best in autumn, it is a day to relish this most generous of seasons before the cooler winter weather sets in, and to learn about how we can nourish our bodies from the inside out, preparing for the change in seasons.”

We were delighted to be part of this year’s Daylesford Harvest Festival! It was a great opportunity for all of us to take stock of how our food grows and where it comes from, at the same time as having fun outdoors in beautiful sunshine before the weather gets too rainy and cold!

As Daylesford themselves put it:

LoLA created a wish tree, and visitors came and made wishes for the world: we had wonderful painted notes ‘more trees’ ‘peace’ and lots of abstract creations. Some wonderful little artists also created their own Tote bags illustrating our slogan ‘Help the bees, save the seas, plant more trees’.

What a lovely event and we were lucky to have a gorgeous sunny day for it!

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Wherever you live, there are always opportunities to connect with and to learn about trees. It is lots of fun for children to imagine what older trees may have seen around them over the course of a lifetime of what may have been hundreds of years!

Every year, the Woodland Trust selects a “Tree of the Year” – one for England, and one each for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you want to vote for your favourite, go to their website: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/tree-of-the-year-2019/ Then try drawing and painting your choice. The Woodland Trust’s winner for England in 2017 was The Gilwell Oak, which sits in Gilwell Park in Epping, Essex. The 2018 winner was Nellie’s Tree in Aberford near Leeds. If you’re nearby, they are well worth a visit!

If you’re looking for dramatic displays of foliage this autumn, you don’t need to travel all the way to the east coast of America, famous for its “fall”. Beautiful colours appear in abundance all across the UK. If you’re searching for rust-coloured leaves, ochre landscapes and autumnal photo opportunities, these are some of the best places to visit, and they include our favourites – the New Forest, the Lake District and Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood famously hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham in a tree called the Major Oak (winner of the Woodland Trust award in 2014).

In London, tree-lovers have made a map of the city’s great trees. And if you’re in the capital, pop into the Natural History Museum which has a cross-section of a Sequoia tree that is 1,300 years old! 

If you’d like to get involved in planting trees, Trees for Cities creates events where you and your Little Ones can plant a tree or help to take care of one. By planting a tree together, you are creating something that may well last way beyond their lifetime!

Meanwhile, go and give a big one a big hug!!

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