Home » July & August Focus : Beans

July & August Focus : Beans

Over the summer in Learning we are exploring beans.

Isn’t it amazing how one ingredient can make an appearance across our activities at the Garden Museum?

Here is a broad bean image from our Elphick & Son Ltd Archive.

ELP/1/2/2/8 Photograph of beans from the Elphick & Son Ltd Archive, used for their catalogues, c. 1950

These are photographs of runner beans grown in the Edible Garden at Vauxhall Primary School. It was established by our Head of Learning Janine in 2010/11 and she ran an afterschool Gardening Club there until 2015. Children made plant labels from clay in collaboration with an afterschool pottery class the same year.

Beans at Vauxhall Primary School
 

We’ve also put together some additional bean resources, all found below, which include;

  • Fun facts about beans suitable for Primary level students to understand.
  • Some ideas for what to cook with five different beans.
  • A simple broad bean recipe that children can get involved with – many hands make light work of all that podding.

We’d love to see what you get up to with beans, are you growing them at home? Have you cooked with them, or produced any art with them? If so, we’d love to see the results – you can share photographs with us via twitter @GardenMusLearn or email us ceri@gardenmuseum.org.uk

Cooking Activity : Broad Bean & Pea dip

Broad beans are fairly labour intensive since they need to be freed from their pods, before cooking, and then freed from their skins. Many hands make light work of this so get the whole family involved.

Follow this step by step photo-recipe to create your fresh, summery broad bean and pea hummus style dip.

Broad Bean & Pea Dip Recipe

Image: Jonathan Mast on Unsplash