Gardening with Children

Spring is the perfect time to get your children into gardening.

Your children will benefit by learning new skills, develop self-confidence, responsibility and have fun spending time looking after plants in the garden and growing their own food. In fact most kids just love being outdoors, getting dirty and creating things. Being outside is also a great way to relieve stress. Also, if you’re having trouble getting your child to eat fruit or vegetables growing them might just do the trick!

What they’ll learn:

• Responsibility
• Understanding cause and effect, eg. if I don’t water the plants they will die
• Sense of achievement from eating the food they have grown
• How food is grown and encourage them to try new fruit, vegetables and herbs
• Love of nature
• Learning about concepts like biology, weather, environment, nutrition, construction, mathematics, eg. spacing of seeds, sunlight, watering etc
• Physical activity and develop their gross motor skills
• Social skills like cooperation and teamwork

Getting started:

• Give your children their own garden space or container
• Involve your child in the planning of the garden and plant selection
• Use child-sized equipment - the EverEarth Gardening Bag is a great option
• Encourage children to dig in the dirt
• Start with easy to grow favourites like tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, lettuce, sunflowers, beans on trellises, etc.
• Plant flowering plants to attract birds, butterflies and insects
• Make a scarecrow using old clothes and a hat
• Add a bird bath, sundial, compost heap or worm farm
• Visit community or botanic gardens or garden centres for ideas

Safety tips

• Use child-sized tools
• Avoid chemicals and garden organically wherever possible
• Keep any chemicals out of reach
• Provide safe storage for tools and equipment
• Do not leave buckets of water unattended around young children
• Make sure children wear hats, sunscreen, suitable clothing and footwear when gardening
• Wash their hands when they have finished in the garden

Your child will enjoy digging in the garden; helping to plant seeds or seedlings; watering; picking fruit and vegetables and using them to help prepare healthy food; weeding; composting, fertilising and mulching; and replanting.

You can view our full range of gardening tools for kids here. 

On rainy spring days, you can continue fresh produce themed activities with fun toys like the EverEarth Fruit and Veg Cart.

 

Do you have a tip for gardening with kids? Let us know by commenting below.