The Orchard Day Nursery Wimbledon

An open-plan nursery with a garden allotment and cooking alongside the chef gives The Orchard Day Nursery Wimbledon a character beyond its Broadway address. Children can choose resources indoors, get muddy outside and encounter food through growing and preparing it. These are concrete experiences for parents who want play to involve more than toys on shelves.

The nursery has capacity for 90 children from birth to five years. At its January 2024 inspection, Ofsted rated it Good and found safeguarding effective, while asking for more consistent planning around individual learning needs and clearer guidance for parents supporting those next steps at home. That balance matters: the overall judgement was positive, but individual learning and communication deserve attention.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS provides the statutory foundation for learning through play, covering communication, movement, relationships and, as children develop, literacy, mathematics, creativity and understanding the world. Here, activities take place outdoors as well as inside, with resources arranged so children can make choices according to their interests. The practical implication is a day built around doing and exploring, rather than sitting through lessons.

Babies encounter stories and songs with actions. For older children, handheld iPads provide another way to sort shapes and record activities. Activities may also include painting with hands and feet and materials to mould. There is room for both digital tools and messy, physical exploration.

Theatre bugs brings music, drama and movement into the activity offer. Weekly sports classes add organised physical activity alongside Teddy tennis, which is included among the nursery's physical experiences. Regular cooking and baking sessions give children opportunities to handle food and practise hygiene.

In January 2024, stories were accompanied by objects and pictures to help children understand unfamiliar words. Number work also appeared in ordinary routines: children counted during activities and considered quantities at snack time. Those examples show how early language and mathematics can be woven into play and care, rather than kept in separate teaching slots.

Outdoor and Community Life

The garden includes a sandpit, a Mud area and an allotment area where fruit and vegetables are grown. Daily outdoor play is encouraged. For a child who likes digging, handling materials and watching plants change, these spaces provide different ways to explore beyond the indoor resources.

Celebrations include Chinese New Year, Eid and World Book Day, while Coffee mornings for Macmillan bring a charitable event into nursery life. Such occasions give families shared activities beyond the daily routine. They also introduce children to celebrations represented among their families.

Relationships and Communication

Each child has a key worker who keeps developmental records and acts as the family's main contact. The relationship starts with an all about me form and discussion of the child's routines, preferences and dislikes. That gives parents a particular person with whom to share changes at home and discuss how their child is settling.

Tapestry, the online learning journal, records photographs, observations and comments about children's experiences. Parents can contribute their own photographs and comments as well as respond to nursery observations. It creates a shared record across home and nursery; the important distinction is between seeing what a child enjoyed and understanding what they are working towards next.

At the January 2024 inspection, Ofsted found that staff recognised additional needs promptly, involved parents and other professionals, and adjusted the environment, but individual next steps were not consistently reflected in activities or translated into advice for learning at home. This is the key qualification to the positive account of relationships. Friendly communication and regular updates need to carry useful learning information too.

Settling arrangements include family photographs, which are made into a familiar picture book, and a comfort toy from home. The settling schedule is emailed after registration. These details give a child recognisable links with home while staff learn about their routines, rather than treating every new starter's first days in the same way.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

A designated SENCO coordinates support for children with additional needs and helps colleagues respond to them. Where support is already in place, staff work with parents and the professionals involved to maintain it. Possible adjustments include changing furniture arrangements, obtaining specialist equipment or adding books in other languages. These are mechanisms for discussing a child's needs, rather than a blanket promise about outcomes.

Changes between age-appropriate rooms involve time with both the existing and new key worker in the new space. For the move to school, children can visit a local school and, where possible, the school they will attend. A key person may occasionally accompany a child who finds the transition difficult. The emphasis is on making the change familiar and providing support around an individual child.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 201-203 The Broadway, Wimbledon, SW19 1NL. Opening hours are 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday, across 51 weeks of the year, with closures for bank holidays, a Christmas week and two staff-training days. Families need to account for those closures as well as the daily opening window.

Full-day sessions run from 7am to 7pm and require at least three days a week. Parents using full days can bring children any time up to 9am and collect before the session ends. Half days run from 7am to 1pm or from 1pm to 7pm, with a minimum of five half-day sessions each week. The shorter sessions offer a different pattern, but still involve a substantial weekly commitment.

Enquiries can be made through the nursery's contact form or by telephone.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded childcare is offered, including funding for eligible children from nine months old and 15 or 30 hours for eligible three- and four-year-olds. For the latter, the standard arrangement is term-time funding across 38 weeks, with a stretched alternative across 51 weeks. Additional attendance beyond the entitlement is paid separately. Funding participation therefore needs to be considered alongside the family's actual booked hours.

Private fees include meals and nappies. For funded arrangements, food and extra consumables carry separate daily charges for older children, while the under-two funding band has no daily food or extra-consumables charge. Extra activities can also be charged separately under the funded terms. The fees page sets out the charge structure; current prices come in the nursery's written quotation.

Meals are made on site by an in-house chef using fresh ingredients, and the dietary policy is to work with families to accommodate requirements wherever possible. Food planning therefore has a direct link with the nursery kitchen.

A non-refundable registration charge and an acceptance deposit apply to paid places; fully funded places require neither. Full-year fees are averaged into monthly payments, including bank holidays and training closures; term-time fees are payable on the first day of the term. Sickness or holidays do not attract refunds. These terms affect the cost of the booking even when a child does not attend.

• Individual learning. January 2024 brought recommendations about tailoring activities and sharing next steps with parents. During a tour, ask for an example of a child's current target, the activity supporting it and the advice sent home.
• Open-plan care. Shared indoor space is part of this nursery's design. Use the 30-minute individual tour to ask how babies' sleep and quieter play are managed alongside active children.
• Weekly commitment and settling. Full days require three days weekly; half days require five sessions. Parents are also expected to remain for some or all initial settling sessions, so leave time for this before returning to work.
• Funding and dietary needs. Food and consumables are treated differently across funded age bands. Confirm current dietary and allergy arrangements with the nursery team.

The Orchard suits families considering full days or morning and afternoon half days who value practical play, garden growing and a personal contact for their child. Tapestry and the key-worker system give parents routes into nursery life, while cooking and Theatre bugs add recognisable experiences to the day.

The strongest decision is one that weighs those features against the weekly minimums, open-plan care and the January 2024 recommendations on individual learning. The garden and activities are appealing; how staff connect them to your child's next steps is the decisive question.