Creating a Green Memorial for HMD
This resource, developed in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Campaign for School Gardening, offers ideas for primary and secondary school students to use plants to commemorate the Holocaust, Nazi persecution of other groups and more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Creating your own green memorial, whether it be a small plant on a windowsill or in a dedicated space in a school garden, is a creative and impactful way of marking Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), either individually or collectively.
The RHS Campaign for School Gardening works to give children and young people opportunities to grow and connect with nature. Connecting with nature can bring us a moment to pause and remember, and the very act of growing illustrates hope for the future.
Flowers, plants and trees of various types have long been used as symbols of remembrance and as a way of commemorating. Yellow flowers, such as daffodils, are often used as a way of remembering the Jews killed during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
This resource provides a foundation for creating your own green memorial and outlines three activity ideas for different settings: 1) Growing an indoor memorial plant in a pot, 2) sowing a wildflower memorial bed outdoors and 3) designing and working towards a memorial garden space.