Policies & Procedures
You can find all our policies and procedures here.
Guides
We produce a selection of guides, on topics that matter to The Garden community.
Writing a Report for Elective Home Education Departments
Testimonials
You can read what families have said about us here.
Further resources
Writing
We recommend buying your books from Hive, who support local bookshops.
- What Adults Can Learn from Young People About Transformational Governance (June 2025) – Founder and Director of The Garden Artemis Bear was commissioned to write this blog for the Transformational Governance Collective.
- Changing Our Minds by Naomi Fisher
- A Different Way to Learn by Naomi Fisher (officially endorsed by The Garden founder Artemis Bear)
- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
- Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera
- Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
- No More Gold Stars by Carol Sanford
- Kith by Jay Griffiths
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere
- Self-Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm by Ian Cunningham
- Free to Learn by Peter Gray
Videos
- Schooling the World by Carol Black is a unique and powerful look at the colonising force school has always and continues to be.
- This video by our friends at States of Mind explains the concept of Self-Determination Theory, which is core to our evidence-base.
- Rethinking Education Campfire Conversation (June 2021) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear joins a Rethinking Education Campfire Conversation “Dare to give young people autonomy.”
- Roundtable: Can compassionate education lead the way for equality? (March 2022) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear takes part in a roundtable discussion on whether compassionate education can offer a pathway to equality as part of the Bath Spa University Equality Week 2022.
Podcasts
- Queers & Co. Podcast (May 2021) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear speaks to Gem Kennedy about self-directed and consent-based learning, amongst many other things.
- The Forest School Podcast (November 2020) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear speaks with Children of the Forest about democratic and sociocratic education.
- How to set up a self-directed learning community (August 2020) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear takes part in a self directed learning communities Founders panel discussion with Q&A as part of the Freedom to Learn Forum 2020.
- Lockdown Learning: The future of education (July 2020) – Founder and director of The Garden Artemis D. Bear takes part in a panel discussion on the future of education for the East Kent Sudbury podcast Lockdown Learning.
Our mycelium
- We’re members of Freedom to Learn, which si a network for anyone interested in social and environmental justice through learning ecosystems.
- We’re an Agile Learning Centre, which means we make use of Agile Learning tools in our approach.
- Human Scale Education is a charity advocating for putting relationships at the heart of the organisation and design of education.
- AERO is an international organisation promoting student-driven, learner-centered approaches to education.