National Children’s Gardening Week is a UK-wide initiative that was set up with the aim of turning tiny fingers green, and to celebrate the fun of growing flowers and food with the younger generations.

Founded in 2015 by BBC Radio Sheffield‘s garden expert, Neil Grant, National Children’s Gardening Week is “an annual festival of fun that’s embraced in homes, schools, and community groups across the country, and supports the amazing Greenfingers charity”. 

Falling on May 27th – June 4th this year (2023), families and schools can get involved with an abundance of activities, resources, competitions and events provided on the National Children’s Gardening Week website.

The initiative recognizes that “children love growing plants and love being involved in the garden but they’re often impatient, wanting to see instant results”. 

This seed of an idea germinated in the imaginations of the HUE team, who thought about how #HUEcameras can be used to educate little ones and reveal the secret world of plants through video and time-lapse image capture. 

All of the time-lapse ideas in this article can be created using the HUE Animation Studio kit, or a HUE HD Pro camera together with animation software (or the HUE Intuition software as described in our guide). Links to detailed instructions and FAQs can be found at the end of the article. 

Capture a ‘pea-lapse‘

Who hasn’t planted peas or beans in a jar in the classroom? With time-lapse photography, this popular preschool project can become a much more fertile learning experience. In this pea-lapse video we captured the time-lapse footage over a span of three hours at a rate of one frame per minute using a HUE HD Pro camera and HUE Intuition software.

Watch plants ‘dancing‘

Plants such as calatheas and rattlesnake plants really love to boogie. Over the course of the day, the leaves of these so-called ‘Prayer Plants’ move constantly, but most notably in the evening, when the leaves rise straight upwards into a praying hands position.   

In this prayer plant time-lapse video the footage was captured over a span of eight hours from 4pm to midnight, at a rate of one frame per minute.

Time-lapse garden makeover

Gather your family, friends or classmates and organise a time-lapse garden makeover. This project idea works really well if you plan to make a significant change to the plot over the day, either planting up a bare patch or taking battle with a heavily overgrown garden.        

Make room for mushrooms

Long time readers of the HUE blog might remember the time-lapse mushroom project we created in collaboration with fun fungi company Back to the Roots. Watch the Amazing Pink Oyster Mushroom time-lapse video and read the accompanying article to find step-by-step instructions for setting up and capturing a time-lapse project with the HUE HD Pro camera. 

Explore capillary action in flowers with @Stem_with_Stephanie

STEM advocate @Stem_with_Stephanie shared this fantastic floral science project with us which explores capillary action in plants using some blue food coloring, a few flowers and a HUE camera.

Capture a cool cucumber moment on camera

National treasure David Attenborough may be best known for showing us the hidden behaviors of animals but he’s just as interested in plants and their clever ways of competing for space to regenerate. Watch his reaction to the amazing Ecballium squirting cucumber plant. We think you’ll have a chuckle too! 

If you are lucky enough to own one of these cool cucumber plants, why not use your HUE camera and software to capture a video of this exciting, exploding seed spreading strategy?

For more National Children’s Gardening Week inspiration, follow @nationalchildrensgardeningweek on Facebook and visit childrensgardeningweek.co.uk.

For more information about how to create your own time-lapse projects with HUE products, please visit our detailed articles and FAQ pages: 

• Time-lapse with HUE Animation software
• Time-lapse with Stop Motion Studio software
• Time-lapse with Back to the Roots and HUE (including instructions for creating a time-lapse video with HUE Intuition)

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