“No one sees the garden as vividly, or cares about it as passionately, as the child who grows up in it.” -Carol Williams, Bringing a Garden to Life
Taking the time and making an effort to instill an interest in gardening will guarantee lifelong benefits for your children, and as their interest grows, so too will your rewards, in the shape of flowers, vegetables, and bright smiles from your little ones as they reap harvests of their own making.
You may think your children have no interest in gardening, but an interest can usually be created by simply finding a way to involve them. Try planting their favorite fruits or vegetables, or experiment with strange or interesting plants (see the link to Odd Behavior Plants below). Enlist their help in identifying garden bugs, both pests and beneficial varieties.
Check out the great resources below and have your kids help you build birdhouses, ponds, fences, forts, or other garden additions, and before long you’ll be Gardening with Kids!
Resources
Community Supported Agriculture for Kids “Farmers who run CSAs sell shares in their farms. Members pay a fee at the beginning of the growing season and then share in both the bounty and the risks of farming.”
Gardening with Kids “Practical advice for creating a successful gardening experience for kids.”
KidsGardening’s Parents’ Primer A marvelous ten chapter online parents’ primer to helping kids learn about gardening, with plenty of supportive resources from the National Gardening Association.
ThinkQuest: All About Plants Besides the textbook-type “scientific” information which is presented, such as how plants grow, how they reproduce, how they make food, and some of the “strange things” plants do, other information is included so that relationships between science and other areas of interest is established. These other areas include poetry, music, movies, and jokes about plants.
KidsGardening Articles, ideas, and resources for both parents and teachers, with writings on kids’ gardening starting with what to grow, how to design and build a kids’s garden, how to plant, and much more.
Kids’ Garden Party There are a few garden products which are definitely associated with parties, picnics and holiday meals which could keep interest at high pitch. Growing the makings for parties is no more trouble than growing the more prosaic foods.
Gardening for Kids“Lots of links to sites on kids and gardening”
Make-Believe with Gardens “Search your memory for garden whimsies of your own childhood, and include some of these playtime plant materials in the child’s own garden.”
Odd Behaviors Garden “There are a number of rugged individualists whose behavior almost seems to have a brain or a will behind it-plants with personal timetables, plants with peculiar movements, queer feeding habits, and unplantlike reactions to cer tain stimuli. When it takes more than just a pretty flower to arouse the gardening impulse, perhaps some of these plants with personalities will do the trick.”
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