How to encourage children to get into gardening
Tuesday, 7 June 2011 10:12 AM
Many adults take great satisfaction in bringing a garden to life and growing their own fruit and veg, but it can be a challenge to inspire children to get involved – especially when the results of their efforts won't always be immediately apparent.
However, teaching kids to help in the garden from a young age can be hugely beneficial. As well as getting them into the fresh air and keeping them under your watchful eye, it helps them gain a better understanding of where food comes from and encourages them to enjoy a diet with more fruit and veg. It can even help them to learn key skills like responsibility and strong work ethic.
Now that summer is upon us and the warmth of the garden is calling, Helen Ellison, head of design at Kent-based gardening company Floral & Hardy, has put together some tips on how to get your children excited and involved in gardening:
Window boxes and plant pots
It’s still possible for you and your children to enjoy growing plants if you don’t have a garden. Flowers and herbs can be grown in window boxes and trailing plants, tomatoes and even runner beans can flourish in hanging baskets. But if you don’t have a handy window ledge or hook from which to hang a basket, watercress, herbs, small peppers and flowers are quite happy in old ice cream tubs indoors.
Let them get muddy!
Children can be dirt magnets, but getting muddy is actually one of the most fun things about gardening and it's a surprisingly easy way of selling the idea of helping mum and dad dig up the beds!
Allocating your children a set of old clothes that becomes their dedicated ‘gardening gear’ and encouraging them to get stuck in, picking weeds, watering plants and digging holes will be a refreshing change from them trying to keep clean and tidy!
Let them choose what to grow
Letting your children make their own decisions on what to grow will give them ownership over their planting and encourage them to stay interested in the process.
Encourage them to grow food they like to eat
Growing vegetables like carrots and potatoes is relatively simple and is a great way of showing children how food gets from soil to table. Coming up with recipe ideas to excite kids, such as Cajun-spiced potato wedges or carrot and coriander soup, will also help them ‘close the loop’ and see how rewarding and delicious growing your own veg can be.
Add an element of competition
Designate a corner of your garden for a sunflower-growing competition and offer a prize for the tallest flower. Encourage your children and their pals to each grow a sunflower and hold weekly measuring events with all competitors in attendance. The weekly measuring will keep the children interested and excited and with the added frisson of a special prize in the offing, you may see some of the best-tended sunflowers in the neighbourhood!
Get them to decorate their own tools
Children’s trowels, rakes, watering cans and forks are sold in many garden and DIY centres and although you can buy some very colourful tools, giving your kids the opportunity to decorate their own will help them feel responsible and make them more likely to want to use them.
Small pots of paint for metal, plastic and wood can be bought from modelling and toy shops and would be a good way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Build a bird table
Enjoying the garden is not just about planting and growing, but can also be about enjoying the local wildlife. Installing a bird table, or even getting your children involved in helping you build one, is a great way of exciting them about getting to recognise local birdlife and teaching them a little bit about mother nature.
If building or buying a bird table is a bit much, then an old dustbin lid propped up on a couple of bricks is an old, but very effective alternative to a birdbath!
When the seasons change again, melt some cooking lard in a pan and mix in seeds and crumbs. Pour the lot into a washed-out yoghurt pot and when set, string upside down to branches or your bird table to encourage birds into the garden in the winter.
Make it worth their while
Older children won’t be as excited about the idea of gardening with mum or dad, but in their teens, motivating them with cold hard cash may interest them more.
Offering your children more pocket money in return for helping you outside is a sneaky but effective way of tearing them away from the games console and TV, and of course it helps you tidy up the garden. You never know, they may well even enjoy it – just don’t expect them to admit it!
Helen Ellison, of Floral & Hardy, specialises in garden design in Kent and across the South-East of England.
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