The Green Parent

Susan Harris doesn’t believe in green thumbs. Instead, she says she learned the ins and outs of gardening by “trowel and error.” That sounds a lot like my current gardening plan…heavy on the error. So I’m happy to take as many tips as I can from Susan, who is now a Master Gardner and gardening coach. Here’s what she has to say about getting your kids excited about gardening!

Kids and Gardening
by Susan Harris

Gardening, that greenest of endeavors, is seeing big increases in popularity lately, with sales of seeds having shot up by about 50% this year. While the demographic showing the most growth is people in their 20s, school gardening is also on the rise – because it teaches kids about nature and food, while getting them outdoors and physically active.

But this is a blog for parents so let’s talk about kids, parents and gardening. My own life-long passion for gardening started because my mother got me involved in HER garden – growing food, growing the wildest, most colorful (even tacky) flowers I chose, and paying me real money for helping with the weeding.

And sure enough, the advice I see most often for getting kids into gardening is to garden yourself, and enlist their help. Maybe teach them to help water or remove dead flowers. And when it comes to growing their first plants, offering big pay-offs are the ones that attract butterflies, those huge, fun sunflowers, and easy-to-start-from-seed edibles like radishes, lettuce, spinach and carrots, preferably foods they actually like to eat. More super-easy, fun plants for kids are spring-blooming bulbs. While full-size daffodils are challenging to plant, there are plenty that are easy – the small daffodils, any crocuses, species tulips, among others, all of which look great in pots.

And you know what’s easy and fun for the winter? Paperwhites!

Just place the bulbs on top of marbles, rocks or shells in a glass bowl, add water, and 3-6 weeks later their incredibly fragrant blooms appear – a welcome sight in the dead of winter.
But your kids may respond to another tack. One of my blogging partners, an obsessed gardener herself, writes about her kids turning to gardening as a way to make money:

I’ve been trying to get my kids interested in gardening for years. Every year, I set aside a piece of my vegetable garden for each of them, a bed about a yard wide and 18 feet long. Every year, they are tremendously excited to pick out seedlings at the nursery–and then instantly lose interest as soon as the stuff is planted.

Until this year, when they are suddenly gripped by the entire process of weeding, harvesting, planning for next year, questions of crops, varieties, growth rates, productivity, flowers versus food. Have they suddenly realized how ineffably beautiful the cycle of life is?

Nope. They’ve figured out that by setting up a farmstand in front of our house, they
can make hundreds of dollars over the course of the season selling the stuff they’ve grown. My youngest has her eye on a $90 American Girl doll, something her sport- and book-oriented parents would not buy her in a million years. I think the doll’s in the bag.

So would YOUR kids like to earn cash as junior truck farmers? The money’s never been better.

And here’s her story about how visiting a daylily nursery turned her oldest son into a hybridizer who’s creating and naming his own brand new varieties – how cool is that? So you never know what’ll turn them on, huh?

But whatever works, gardening for kids – or adults – is a way to connect with nature that doesn’t require getting in the car and driving to the mountains. And once you get hooked on growing plants, there’s no telling where that’ll lead.

Gardening Resources:

Kidsgardening.org: Great source, especially the Parents Primer.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorderby Richard Louv.

Susan Harris is a Master Gardener, gardening coach, writer and blogger. Visit Susan online at Sustainable-Gardening.com, Sustainable Gardening Blog, and GardenRant.