Dr. Liz Dauncey, in 'Poisonous Plants - a guide for parents and childcare providers' lists Viburnum as a 'safe plant (that children will love to grow)' so I won't bother to mention all my other books of poisonous plants that don't include it.

I'm a great believer in educating children about plants - that they must never eat any berries from the garden without their parents' say-so, for example.

There are so many toxic plants/bulbs/berries/leaves that if you just stuck to 'safe' plants, you'd have a concrete or grass square as a garden.

Spritzhenry

I agree with your first sentence but not your second.

Liz Dauncey lists 98 species in her 'safe' list so you could, easily, fill a garden.

My view would be to use 'safe' plants to get children involved in the actual gardening while teaching them to be wary of things they don't know about.

I could not agree more with you but the problem is when parents do not know lets not forget the not everyone is keen gardener and not everyone has a garden so when local authorities plant plants that are highly Poisonous as one did resonantly near a kids playground surly they should do there homework and make sure that the plants are safe. A good example of the young not knowing what plants/flowers are a youngster at work asked me if some sunflower cut flowers were sunflowers because the ones they had seen were 12ft high and have huge flowers that they grew at school also someone did not know what lilies were.

For more than 100 years domestic gardens have been planted with toxic plants as are parks, playgrounds and some streets thank goodness and children are not dropping like flies. You do not have to be a gardener or indeed have any knowledge of plants to guide your children in to not running across the road or eating berries/plants. It is this culture of health and safety that feeds the scaremongers. Fortunately common sense tends to overrule them.

I was brought up with a laburnum in the garden and simply told never to eat the seeds because they are poisonous. Children can be taught about plants from a very early age - I'm totally with Bamboo on this one.
Sadly so many children now take no notice when told "no", but it's totally up to the parents to make sure theirs aren't like this. If children are never confronted with any kind of danger they will not learn, and so be unprepared for the real world.

Has Bamboo removed her comment Steragram?

No, I meant you Drc, sorry. Old age is a terrible thing lol.

Thats Ok ST - I thought I had missed something LOL

:))
S