A Small Garden for Small Bears

Because we enjoy gardening so much, Polar has been looking for a patch of garden that we bears can look after on our own.

One day last week, when Endon was having a reading lesson, Polar told us she had picked a patch for us to plant, in the vegetable garden.

'I want to make sure there are plenty of flowers to attract the bees,' she said.  'And it would be nice to have some we can pick for the house too.' 

We finished the page we were on and jumped down from our bear basket.  Polar took our cornflower seeds from Gecko and some others out of her seed box and, carrying a packet each, we followed her down the garden.

The patch of ground which was going to be our bear garden was right next to the greenhouse.  We fetched our gardening tools and set to work clearing the few little weeds growing in it. 

Soon we had a nice bare patch of soil.  We moved all the big stones into a pile and Polar took them away.

'Let's plant Mrs Gecko's seeds first!' Endon bear insisted.  Hanley and I agreed.  We raked two little trenches in the ground for Endon to drop the seeds into.

'Everything's ready for the seeds, Endon,' I said.  'Sprinkle them in carefully and not too close together.'

Endon was very good and sprinkled the seeds carefully into the rows we had made, then Hanley Bear used his rake to cover them over, stamping the ground down with his back paws as he did.

We had some calendulas and nasturtiums to plant as well, so our bear garden was soon full of little seeds, waiting to germinate.  Polar put some wire mesh over the top, to stop cats digging in our nicely tilled soil.

When we got to the far side of our plot, Endon saw what happened to the stones.  Polar had added them to a path which led round behind the greenhouse.

'Where do the weeds go?' asked Hanley.  Polar lifted him up and showed him the compost heap.

'All this will rot down and go back into the ground to improve the soil and feed the plants,' she explained.  'We put it on top of the beds and the worms take it down into the ground for us.'

We hope the bees will like our flowers.  Before we went indoors for tea, I watched them buzzing about in the chives along the edge of the vegetable patches.  Hopefully, by the time the chives finish flowering, there will be lots of other flowers there for them, planted by bears!