Tips for Gardening with Children
Spring is the perfect time to get our gardens ready for prime growing season, and we’ve got you covered with some tips for gardening with children! We are big proponents of gardening with little ones, as it’s such a great learning activity that yields so many benefits. Children can learn about science and nature, while developing patience and responsibility. Plus, the results can sometimes be yummy (if you’re growing food) and it’s a great way to motivate the family to spend more time outdoors. Read on for some of our tips for success when gardening with young children:
Start Small
If this is your first foray into gardening with your kids, it’s totally okay (and recommended) that you start small. Maybe just pick up a few pots and several types of plants to keep it manageable—if it doesn’t overwhelm you, you’ll be more likely to stick with it!
Choose Native Plants
One of the best things you can do to increase the odds of gardening success is to choose plants that are native to your region. This way, you know that the plants are primed to thrive given your climate. Here in Southern California, that usually means plants that stand up well to warm weather conditions and have low moisture needs. There are numerous resources out there, but we’ve found the website Calscape.org to be very useful in the planning stage and when coming up with a maintenance plan.
Select “Rewarding” Plants
We can appreciate the value of trees and shrubs, but these tend to be slow-growing and kids don’t get to see the fruits of their labor very quickly. To improve motivation and to support the learning of plant science, we like to choose plants that offer quick rewards. For example, cherry tomato plants are very hardy once established and can produce many tomatoes within a season. One of our kids was very reluctant about tomatoes, but was curious to try them after going through the growing process and is now a very enthusiastic consumer of tomatoes! Flowers can also be “rewarding” too—especially if we get to create free floral arrangements!
Chart Your Watering Schedule
Needless to say, it’s important to remember to water your plants. However, if you’re growing native plants or succulents that don’t need very much moisture, over-watering can become an issue. We’ve definitely lost a few succulents due to a kid’s eagerness to give their plants some love by dumping water in the pot every day. Before you throw away that seed packet or label, take note of the plant’s moisture needs. Grab or print a calendar that you’ll use just for gardening and write down when you’ll need to water which plants. Some will need to be watered just once a week, while others require a little bit every other day, and it can be too easy to forget if you don’t write it down!
Share the Responsibility
Gardening is a great opportunity to allow children to take the lead and learn to be responsible for taking care of something. If you’ve already got a chore system going for an older child, simply add gardening to the list. Just remember that if your plants don’t thrive, this can be a good teachable moment—you can problem solve together to see how you can do better next time.
We hope these tips for gardening with children will help set your family up for a wonderful planting season ahead! Happy Spring!