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Kids in My Garden? You've Got to Be Kidding!

© Linda Mazar

Hello! Gardening with children is a new topic here in the garden section at Suite 101. I hope that what you read here in the coming months will help you foster a love of gardening in the kids you come in contact with where you live or work. It doesn't matter whether they are your own children, the neighbor kids, your Sunday school class, or your school classroom students. You can share gardening with the kids in your life, especially if you make it a fun learning experience.

Of course, gardening with kids is different from gardening by yourself or a spouse. Kids have a much shorter attention span. I find that if I am outside working, my son Jimmy wants to do what I'm doing. That's one hint, kids like adults present and involved. To encourage a positive experience, make sure your expectations are reasonable. Don't expect a child to plant an entire bed all at one time. Spread things out over several days or time periods and plan to do much of the work yourself. Focus on giving them a taste of the experience. They will ask for more chances if you make it interesting and fun. Give them jobs which they ask to do. This gives you a gauge to what interests them. If they want to pull a wagon all over your yard, maybe they could bring flowers from the deck to a front flower bed in the wagon for you. If the child is small, putting a four-pack of seedlings or some sticks or a few small rocks in a tiny wagon for them to pull around can be lots of fun for them and help them feel a part of the process.

Don't expect kids to be vigilant weeders or steady workers. I show my son which are weeds and which are flowers and let him pull as long as he has interest. When he wanders off to play for a while, that is OK. I don't want gardening to be work. I want it to be a pleasure. I try to have an area that is OK for him to dig in. He has good quality kid-sized tools that he likes to use. An area that's being worked on or the compost pile offers plenty of opportunity to dig to his heart's content. The trick is to make garden chores fun. And what better time to start than now in the fall season?

The copyright of the article Kids in My Garden? You've Got to Be Kidding! in Gardening with Children is owned by Linda Mazar. Permission to republish Kids in My Garden? You've Got to Be Kidding! in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.