In this tutorial we’re going to explore the Cherry Garden Orchard — a child-friendly, graphical picture of a child’s progress against the Cherry Garden framework. Each child has their own orchard: an illustrated landscape where their learning grows as flowers and trees, with every petal and leaf backed by the real observations behind it.

The Orchard works best with three refinements configured for Cherry Garden (the default) — petals grow with the refinement recorded, so more tiers dilute the effect. See Using the Cherry Garden Framework for the configuration, including the Display Cherry Garden to relatives setting that decides whether relatives can open their child’s orchard too.

Getting there

Click Children in the menu on the left, then open the dropdown next to the child’s name and choose Cherry Garden Orchard. (You’ll also find it in the Quick Links panel on the child’s profile.)

A child's dropdown menu on the Children page with the Cherry Garden Orchard option highlighted
Cherry Garden Orchard in the child’s dropdown menu.

The orchard opens with a quick guide to getting around. Click Let’s explore! to head in.

The orchard's opening screen, Explore your child's learning orchard, with four steps explaining signposts, branches and pots, petals and leaves, and the camera, and the Let's explore button.
The welcome screen — and Let’s explore!

Exploring the orchard

The orchard itself is a rolling landscape with four signposts, one for each area of learning: Personal, social and emotional development; Communication, Language and Literacy; Mathematics; and Physical Development. Tap a signpost to focus on that area. The camera in the bottom corner saves a photo of whatever you’re looking at — handy for comparing the orchard term by term.

The orchard landscape with sun, rainbow, trees and four area signposts, and the help and camera buttons in the bottom corner.
The orchard — tap a signpost to focus on an area.

Each area grows on its own plants: strands still in the earliest branches (branches 1-4) appear as potted flowers, growing a petal for each milestone, while from the later branches (branches 5-10) the strand moves onto the area’s cherry tree, whose main branches are the strands of the area. Petals and leaves grow and deepen in colour as the child’s refinements build.

The Communication, Language and Literacy tree with its main branches labelled Language & Communication, Attention & Understanding, Reading and Writing, and small petals growing on the branches
An area’s tree — one main branch per strand.

Tap a branch to zoom right in on that strand — each petal or leaf is a milestone the child has been assessed against.

The Relationships and others branch zoomed in, with coloured petals growing along its smaller branches.
Zoomed into a strand — a petal per assessed milestone.

Reading the evidence

Tap any petal or leaf and the milestone’s evidence opens — the observations that assessed it, complete with their photos and notes, each with a View in Tapestry link through to the observation itself.

The evidence window for a milestone, titled with the statement and listing the observations behind it with their photos, notes and View in Tapestry links.
A petal’s evidence — the observations behind the milestone.

The Back button in the bottom corner steps you out one level at a time — strand to tree, tree to orchard — and the ? button replays the welcome guide. And that’s it! The orchard is a lovely way to share a child’s Cherry Garden journey — with the child themselves, and with their family if you’ve chosen to share it.

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