A real garden your class can look after online
Virtual Micro Gardening gives students aged 13 and over a real UK garden to look after from a phone or classroom computer. It's free, it needs nothing installed, and it turns a few minutes a day into a steady habit of noticing weather, seasons and wildlife.
🔬 Science
Ecosystems, food webs and pollinators, seen through a real garden and the wildlife that visits it.
🌦️ Geography
Weather and seasons: rain, storms, cloud cover and changing light, logged automatically by the camera.
💻 Computing
How a computer "sees": image hashes, motion detection and pixel analysis, explained in plain English.
Why it works in school
- Little and often. Energy refills daily, so students play a few minutes a day rather than hours at a time.
- Real data. The garden diary is written automatically from real webcam photos, giving you a ready-made data set of weather and wildlife events.
- Consequences that make sense. Watering after heavy rain is penalised, and repeating the same job too often costs extra. Good gardening is good play.
- Calm by design. There's no chat, no messaging between players and no in-game purchases.
Classroom and eco-club activity ideas
1. Weather watch (Geography, 2 weeks)
Students record the camera's weather events from the garden diary each day, then compare them with the Met Office record for the same dates. Did the camera miss anything? Did it raise any false alarms?
2. Wildlife tally (Science, 2–4 weeks)
Keep a class tally of wildlife visits spotted by the camera and the collectibles that appear in the game. Use it to discuss food webs: why might more birds turn up after rain brings worms to the surface? Our wildlife guide has a fact for each species.
3. How does a computer know it's raining? (Computing, 1 lesson)
Read How our garden webcam spots rain, growth and wildlife, then ask students to design their own rule for spotting something in a photo, such as snow, a cat or autumn leaves. What would cause false positives?
4. Streak challenge (eco-club, half a term)
Each member looks after their own plot. Who can keep the longest daily streak without breaking the rules of good gardening? Discuss what regular care means for a real garden compared with a game.
5. Plan the next project (any, 1–2 lessons)
We're planning bigger projects for the real garden, including a bug hotel, a wildflower meadow, a tree and a vegetable patch. Students research one, weigh up the benefits for wildlife, and make the case for it.
Practical details
- Age: players must be 13 or older. We recommend that parents or guardians of under-18s know their child is playing.
- Accounts: each student needs their own account with an email address and a username. There are no class or group accounts yet.
- Devices: any modern browser on a phone, tablet, Chromebook or PC.
- Cost: free. No subscription, licence or in-game purchases.
- Safety: see our FAQ and safety information.
Using Virtual Micro Gardening with a class or club? We'd love to hear how it goes. Email [email protected].
Ready to look after a real garden?
There's no subscription and nothing to pay. It runs in your browser and only takes a few minutes a day. Ages 13+.