🍄 The Toadstool Trail at MAXwell Garden 🌿

Frogs in ponds, figs, plums, crab apples and pears on trees… Also worms. Wiggly wee tiger worms in a compost heap. Strawberries, chives, gloriously tall artichokes and school plots stuffed with vegetables. Birds and bees and slugs and caterpillars and children! So many joyful, playful children enjoying outdoor freedom, embracing imagination and creativity and nature and secret learning – whilst eating those strawberries and chives and spotting those birds and bees and drawing the gloriously tall artichokes and wiggly wee tiger worms…

… And now toadstools! And now they can go on their very own Toadstool Trail too! Complete with map and challenges. 🍄🍄🍄

~ The Story Behind it All! ~

Map illustration snippet:
The Big Frog Pond, The Fig Tree with Five yummy Figs from 2024 and Plum Tree

The first time I visited The MAXwell Centre was around March 2024. I had been meaning to visit for so long but today must have been the right day. Such a warm welcome and so inspiring. The Maxwell Community Centre & Garden is the green heart of the Hilltown in Coldside, Dundee since 2014. They support everyone in their neighbourhood to feel well and do well in life. They connect people of all ages and backgrounds with each other and with nature, restoring the urban environment.

One of our first adventurers at the launch of the Toadstool Trail at MAXwell
(photo by Cara Pirie)

When you go into the centre you will be greeted with a smile at the door and a warm welcome and invitation to come in. You may want to visit their food larder or ask for advice, get support with bills, IT, food and more. You may want to connect with others in your neighbourhood and sit together during their cosy corner times where everyone chats over puzzles and cups of tea. There is usually warm homemade soup on the stove too, made from produce straight from the garden. You may want to learn more about how to grow & cook in the MAXwell garden or at home, but just don’t know where to start. There are wonderful opportunities for young people too, to connect with food and nature through after school or holiday garden clubs.

Have to say though, the frogs in the garden pond absolutely stole the show – as I now know they do every year! The big pond was so full of frogs you could hardly see the water, so it was only right that these small garden inhabitants got a spot on the garden map! Everyone loves them so much – I’d have been in trouble if they weren’t included. I think pretty much everyone requested frogs children and big children alike!

The MAXwell Community Garden (photo by MAXwell)

So yes, map! Our lovely first visit last March to the Maxwell Garden and Community Centre ended up with us all getting rather giddy. We had talked all about The Toadstool Trail and all about the wonderful things everyone does in the garden and by the time we left we had all agreed that we would love to launch the second permanent Toadstool Trail in the MAXwell Garden (with the first being in Dundee’s Botanic Garden) – and you can’t have a Toadstool Trail like this without a map!

Would you like to know more about The Toadstool Trail? How it started, how the toadstool sculptures are created? More about our first trail and all the pop ups? Our education plans? Playful Green Dundee – our collaboration with MAXwell as the first stewards in UK alongside Hull University for the RSA’s Playful Green Planet initiative? Then there is more:

🍄 The Story behind The Toadstool Trail 🍄 The First Toadstool Trail at Dundee Botanic Gardens 🍄 Playful Green Dundee 🍄 Outdoor Education – Our Toadstool Extras 🍄

~ Co-Designing The Toadstool Trail ~

This next Toadstool Trail just had to be designed by the children and young people of MAXwell. It is for them so it should be by them too. A story told through toadstools and a map of their time spent in the garden to share with others.

So we all got stuck in and got to work… and oh wow did they get stuck in. The ideas were flowing, the drawings incredible and the laughter infectious. We played and drew, made stick things, mud things, things from leaves and flowers, got inspired by big things and teeny tiny wee things. Spotted ladybirds and slugs, listened to the birds, danced and ran and had a wonderful time. Maps were created, toadstools were sited, stories were told and everyone celebrated the garden, its creatures and those who love it so very much.

They are the garden club, the youth council, the fairy garden makers, bug hotel bosses, the wishing well painters, the frog studiers, the bird watchers, the growers, the weeders, the den makers, the stick collecting adventurers. They are the listeners, the storytellers, the ladybird watchers, the joy makers and keepers of the treasured golden raspberries!

They are so very proud of their garden and it was an absolute joy co-designing the whole trail with them, hearing how they use the space, their stories and their favourite places. They chose where the toadstools should be planted, what should feature on the map and what prompts we should put on the back of the map that link with each toadstool. The children were so involved with it all – proudly leading the way around the garden as we pretended to be frogs and bees and tall tall trees, excitedly pointing out the fabled spot where the ladybird bush grows.

~ The Map ~

Then it was over to me… the illustrator, the listener, the observer, the gatherer of all the ideas. I pulled together everything we had worked on during our garden club workshops and drew and drew and drew. I started with the wall and the paths and then began to fill the garden with trees, bushes, structures, plants, creatures and of course – the toadstools.

I loved including all the mini stories within the bigger story of the garden and I hope that each person who contributed to this will spot something of theirs that will make them smile. It could be a tiny wee ladybird, a tiger worm or frog? It might be the wise old fig tree or the story stones? Or the den….

Map snippet:
To the west the steps lead up to the community centre past grow tunnels and over ancient cobbles. In the garden, heading towards the south west corner you will find a compost heap, stuffed with helpful worms, the juice bar (often used for mud cocktails) and the Stick Store tucked behind the Tayberry Bush.

A bee heads North, flying over current bushes, towards one of several bug hotels and the fabled golden raspberries. There is a sheltered seating area where garden feasts are held and fairy gardens created, and the ladybirds balance across their bunting washing line. Edible flowers and fruit is growing all round – perfect for after school snacking.

Toadstool number 5 is nestled at the bottom of Crab Apple Alley, ready to connect your senses of taste and smell to nature through all those garden tasty treats to sniff and eat. The strawberries are so sweet whilst the nasturtium flowers peppery whilst the nearby sage and lavender smell incredible.

A robin can be spotted on top of Rod’s garden fork (as he always digs the holes to plant our toadstools). The robin is a nod to the BirdNet Pi project results from MAXwell Centre (by Dr David Martin) as they came out top for feathered visitors, with 4288 recorded visits over January 2025 alone!

Here’s a more in depth run through of the Toadstool Trail map for Maxwell Garden. Sound on! (and have a chuckle at the auto captions translated from my Scottish accent – must work on my pronunciation of ‘toadstool’!)

~ The Toadstools – The Nature Connectors ~ What’s on the Back of the Map? ~

Just as the toadstools in the Dundee Botanic Garden acted as little discussion points, wee calls to action, prompts to pay attention to something, our toadstools in the garden had the same job to do.

Once more the garden club sprung into action! We needed to further connect our toadstools and our map with nature! With the garden and all its treasures. The garden club are pros at this already but there are many other visitors to the garden too, children from local schools and nurseries, teachers, people from the local community and beyond – so we wanted something that would connect them to nature as much as we are and in a way that they could do so even if we weren’t with them.

~ Planting Toadstools! ~

27th March 2025 was a good day! Rod, Dannielle and I were very excited. That was the day we planted six toadstools that have now become our second permanent Toadstool Trail – in The Maxwell Centre Garden.

The frogs were very helpful – can you see the little one stealing the show from the pond in Rod’s pic above and the other sneaking a peek at her new 🍄 neighbour? (: Lots of these pics were taken by Rod)

Thank You!!

🍄 Before we go any further – Huge thanks to NHS Tayside Charitable Foundation for funding our trail. All the workshops and creating and fun wouldn’t have been possible without your support. It means that we can encourage so many more people in our community to connect with nature through the trail in the garden and feel its health and wellbeing benefits.

Thanks too to Abertay University, Gerry High and Ellie Smith for helping to produce the toadstool sculptures. To my fab assistant Skye Sutherland for helping with all the extras behind the scenes. Thanks also to Kevin Frediani, and the Dundee Botanic Garden team for all their support with our first Toadstool Trail. Hope Busack too from RSPB Scotland, Fiona Hynes for your educational assistance, Blair McCafferty (Creature Emporium) for an extra helping hand, Cara Pirie for beautiful photos of our launch and Alan and Amanda from SheffMed for our mini toadstools.

Huge thanks as always to the other half of Team Toadstool – Rod Mountain! The trail wouldn’t be half of what it is now without all of his enthusiasm, support and absolutely bonkers ideas. More of which we will be able to divulge soon.

And to MAXwell – it has been such a pleasure working with you all. Thank you for letting us come play! We are so glad that our adventures together are only just beginning too as we embark on our Playful Green Dundee journey as the first Playful Green Planet Stewards. Go Dundee!