Natural World

Lisa Hallden shares how gardening for the family’s vegetable needs can be hugely rewarding from the sprout of the first seed to the picking of the harvest

Our pick of the best places in the UK for discovery and adventure

If you feel low or are seeking meaning to your life, try this: order a hundred native tree saplings from a nursery (a mix of oaks, silver birches and wild cherries), then go and plant them out in an ecologically deprived area with a hundred children between 5 - 8 years of age. After you’ve created a new woodland, with the smell of earth on your hands, your face upturned to the rain, sun, and wind, you will feel light, joyful, uplifted - this I promise you. We talk to Andreas Kornevall who plants trees with children to restore the world.

WHIRL-Y- FAYRE has won the Best Family Festival Award 2016, as voted by our readers. We received over one thousand votes to our Green Parent Festival Awards 2016 and Whirl-y-fayre won the award for its sense of community and connection (and the children's magical fairyland!).

Britain has some of the most amazing coastline in the world, and it is more accessible than ever before, yet many of its beaches remain hidden. These little slices of peace and paradise welcome the intrepid adventurer and those in the know. So why not set out to discover our shell-white sands and blue lagoons, hidden smugglers’ coves and dunes as far as the eye can see. Find a campsite on the beach and cook up supper on the sands for a really wild and back-to-nature experience. Daniel Start leads us on a journey round some of Britain’s most beautiful hidden beaches, describing the best places to swim, walk and explore.

The Feb/Mar 2016 edition has a theme of life-changing experiences. Think how to strengthen your body, how to take a year off and go traveling with kids and one family’s story of switching to home education after school. Want to find out how to get your hands on this gorgeous mag? Read on...

It may seem as though the hard winter ground will not provide any nourishment for foragers but look hard enough and you'll find wild greens ready to spice up your soups and stews.

There is no better classroom than the beautiful world we live in. And there's no better way to learn than getting out and about and seeing it all first-hand. Nichola West heads for the great outdoors to compile the ten best experiences from around Europe that will have your children learning and loving the world around them

January is the ideal time to get away. There are lots of great deals to be had across the UK and, even if January doesn’t strike you as the best time to be exploring the countryside, if we are blessed with crisp, cold days, a winter walk can be magical. With so much incredible countryside all around us, escaping after the rush and bustle of the festive period can be just what the doctor ordered. Finding yourself in a cosy cottage with a roaring fire and just the sound of birdsong to interrupt your thoughts, offers the chance to reflect on the past year and the year to come.

Birch, the first tree in the Celtic Ogham, is symbolic of new beginnings. Its time runs from 24 December to 20th January. Check out these ways to harness some of the magickal powers with a cleansing tonic and a birch broom.