Gardening with children will almost invariably instill in them a love for nature and a desire to protect the natural world. They will also have a greater understanding of where their food comes from and what it means to eat seasonally. Even if you don't have a big garden - in fact even if you don't have a garden at all - you can still do gardening with children. Here's 15 ideas to get you started:
15 great ways to get gardening with kids
- Grow some sprouting seeds such as cress on the windowsill.
- Plant up some pots with flowers, bulbs or herbs and get your kids to be chief water monitor.
- Grow a bean wigwam that doubles up as a den.
- Grow plants from seeds you've saved from food eg lemon, apple, avocado, passion fruit etc.
- Get your kids to help you with "grown up" tasks such as weeding, pruning etc.
- Plant a tree in your garden (make sure it isn't going to grow too big!) and maybe even bury a time capsule underneath it.
- Plant up a salad or pizza ingredients in a grow bag - lettuce, tomato, basil for example.
- Grow some edible flowers - pansy, nasturtium, scented rose petals, borage, dandelion, courgette flowers etc. (Do check the flowers you eat are edible and make sure your children understand that not all flowers can be eaten).
- Grow a sunflower and measure how tall it gets.
- Grow a pumpkin for Halloween.
- Make a log pile for minibeasts in a quiet and shady corner.
- Put up bird feeders and a water bath plus nest boxes for birds and bats.
- Make a compost heap and watch things rot away naturally.
- Make your own plant labels - here are 7 ideas for home-made plant labels.
- Decorate some old wellies, use old boots or find old containers and upcycle them into plant pots.
Children are (almost) never too young to help in he garden nor do broken arms stop them! Here's my older son digging when he was only just old enough to walk and my younger son planting a pumpkin with his arm in plaster!
Will your children be gardening this year?
These are such great ideas! I love seeing kids helping out at my allotment garden !
ReplyDeleteI love it when it becomes clear the kiddos are retaining knowledge from the garden! Usually I feel like I'm boring them to death but they're become quite the little horticulturalists! :)
ReplyDeleteWe've got a couple of bird feeders in our garden. Erin loves watching for them to come.
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas, getting children gardening is brilliant for them. Love your post #goinggreen
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas - I have so many fond memories of gardening/ having my own small garden patch when I was a child & I'm sure this had a major impact on me... #goinggreen
ReplyDeleteI used to help my dad at his allotment. I loved it. Growing your own vegetables and fruit is so much fun and hard work too. Sadly allotments are so expensive to run nowadays and my garden isn’t big enough and isn’t south facing. I’ve got plants indoors but I’m restricted to what I can grow. I miss picking peas from their pods and the beetroot was 👌
ReplyDeleteMy children are not fussy eaters and I swear that's down to them being involved in the garden from an early age. #GoingGreen
ReplyDeleteWonderful post, Rosie! I love the photo of the little one in a diaper helping in the garden...so cute. :)
ReplyDeleteI'd love to have you share this on Farm Fresh Tuesdays!
I wish my daughter would have enjoyed gardening more, but it was never her thing. When she has kids, I'm going to kidnap them and teach them to love gardening, no matter what, LOL! The one thing my daughter does remember fondly (she is 24 now) was the year we raised and hatched butterflies. I know not strictly gardening, but still a wonderful activity to instill a love of nature.
ReplyDeleteI found you on the Farm Fresh Tuesday blog hop. :-)
I am not a gardener, but I need to try harder. My kids and husband enjoy it though. Some great ideas here, easy for anyone to try.
ReplyDeleteApologies that this #goinggreen comment is so late.