A house, a garden, and 32 explorers.
Three connected rooms opening onto the garden — built for free-flow, furnished at knee height, and gated like a small, cheerful fortress.
Started by two early-years teachers with a shared allotment.
Fran and Bea taught reception classes for a decade and kept meeting four-year-olds who’d never planted anything, poured anything, or been trusted with a real trowel. Little Meadow opened in 2017 as the antidote: a preschool where the garden is a classroom and the classroom is mostly a garden with a roof.
Eight years on, the allotment beds are still going — now weeded by very small people with very strong opinions.
Four promises to every family.
On the parents’ noticeboard, lived in every room.
Known by name
A keyworker who genuinely knows your child — and tells you the small stuff, not just incidents.
Outdoors daily
Garden time every day, all weathers. Waterproofs ours, puddles theirs.
Unhurried
Time to finish the game, the story, the hole. Rushing is for grown-ups.
Open doors
Drop in any time unannounced — a setting that needs notice is telling you something.
A Wednesday, roughly 10am.
What the middle of a good morning looks like.
The mud kitchen
Open all weathers
The book corner
Where the flop happens
The growing beds
Strong opinions, small trowels
The making table
Glitter contained, mostly
Lunch
Marisa’s kitchen, small tables
The welly line
32 pairs, chaos-adjacent
Nine adults worth copying.
Average six years at the Meadow — children thrive on faces that stay.
Fran Hollis
Co-founder & Manager
Bea Msimang
Co-founder & SENCo
Marisa Conti
Cook — the most popular adult
The best tour is an ordinary morning.
Come at 9:30 on any weekday and see it mid-flow — small groups, big plans, someone inevitably being a dinosaur.