Three-year-old Desmond knows where the strawberries are and he loves looking for them almost as much as eating them. Gardening with kids
rally grow into gardeners. As a child growing up, gardens were all around me. My
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grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles, all had gardens and they all welcomed me inside to help. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of helping
my family in the garden. I remember my Nana’s amazing flowers, especially her blue morning glories climbing up the old oak tree in front of her house. That’s where I fell in love with flowers. My grandparents taught me the value of grow- ing your own food and the joys of sharing it with others. It was from family, my aunts and uncles and my parents, that I grew to love growing fruits and vegetables. Thinking back, it seems that so many of my childhood memories, and now my adult ones, have been sown in a garden. Now that I am a mom with children of my own, I want
to pass on the love of gardening that I grew up with. I enjoy having them help me in the garden, even if it means that we get sidetracked discussing worms or that my rows aren’t planted perfectly straight. Sometimes it’s hard to think of ways to include children in
gardening but it is through simple activities that they learn so much more about the world around them. Children thrive on knowledge and they learn from everything they do; if you want to nourish a green thumb all you need do is plant the seed and nurture it.
32 • Home and Gardener Living
here are two types of gardeners, those who have found their passion later in life and those that have been nurtured, like a seed, from a young age and just natu-
Growing a new generation of little green thumbs By Tania Moffat Just imagine the garden through a child’s eyes – the bugs
landing on the plants, the worms in the dirt, or even just watching the plants as they grow. These are all exciting things to children. By exposing them to gardening you can help them learn about the growing process. You’ll be surprised by how much they retain. Strawberrylicious
Berry season kicks off the yard taste tours at our house
every year. The kids know that once the strawberries are ready it is only a matter of time for the rest of the fruit and vegetables. If I can’t find a child outside, I need only look in the strawberry patch or check later for the red evidence on their shirts, hands and faces. While our patch is a lot smaller than it used to be, it still yields enough for plenty of fresh eating: strawberry pancakes, smoothies, muffins and more. Picking strawberries from your own garden or at a u-pick
is an excellent opportunity to teach young children simple lessons about colours, what the berries look like when they are ready to be picked, how to pick berries without ripping out the plant. These are all great conversation starters. But by far, the best part is watching their eyes light up with excite- ment s they find the berries hiding under the leaves. Activities like this help little ones with their manual dexter-
ity, and their creative side is sparked as they try to decide what some of the oddly shaped berries look like. They also invite discussions about bugs. While picking we found a daddy long legs and a black cricket, spurring lots of bug talk. After a quick picking we were able to fill a bowl with straw-
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