How Does Your Garden Grow

Do you know this nursery rhyme?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

The teddy bears were singing it the other day when it suddenly reminded Bubbles and Tommy that it was time to check on the plants they had sown last month and see how they were growing. They had planted ranunculus bulbs into pots in the greenhouse. Now they are big plants, and almost ready to go out into the garden, where they will flower.

If you look closely at the leaves on the plants, they look like buttercup leaves, don't they? That's because ranunculus are members of the buttercup family and they have some characteristics (that's just a big word which means "things about them") in common. Go and find a buttercup leaf and compare it to the ones in the picture.