A CHILD ’ S WORLD
making growing stuff FUN for kids
The goal of bringing your kids along to a community garden is not merely to get cheap labor to make the weeding go quicker—it’s to plant the seeds of an interest that can last a lifetime. “You want to keep it fun, give them a desire to come back again and again,” says Charlie Nardozzi, a horticulturalist at the National Gardening Association who has gardened extensively with children of all ages. “Be sure to show how much you enjoy being there, and kids will pick up on it.”
• Dig a hole. For the littlest gardeners, nothing beats digging in the dirt. Don’t worry about neat rows or even planting actual seeds—just let kids have at it. “When they’re digging, a lot of interesting things happen,” adds Nardozzi. “They’re finding worms and bugs and rocks.” Supply them with child-size trowels—or even sturdy spoons.
• Give them some space. Offering kids their own special area in the com- munity garden gives them a sense of ownership—and distracts them from hanging off your newly staked beanpoles. Involve kids in the planning, but do provide guidance about what plants and gardening designs are most likely to succeed in your region. (Our kids’ first brainstormed vision involved a koi pond and a crazy-quilt of dozens of fruits and vegetables crammed into a kitchen-sized square.) Local Cooperative Extension Services are typically treasure troves of online advice. Kids may also enjoy decorating their space by painting accent rocks or designing plant labels, says Nardozzi.
• Select some sure bets. While no one ever actually eats radishes, their rapid growth and forgiving nature mean instant gratification. The seeds of vegetables such as squash, pumpkins, and beans, all of which are big and easily gripped, will be much less frustrating to little fingers than microscopic carrot seeds.
• Plant some whimsy. Kids will love a towering sunflower wall to hide behind, a pole teepee for climbing beans they can hide under, or a pumpkin patch to harvest for Halloween. (For added drama, they can plant tiny gourds right next to coach-sized pumpkins.) You can also try some unusual choices with built-in kiddie PR, such as chocolate mint (yum). Our community garden
found Molly Dannenmaier’s A Child’s Garden: 60 Ideas to Make Any Garden
Come Alive for Children (Timber Press, 2008) a source of inspiring ideas.
• Cultivate friends. Even if your community garden doesn’t have a formal program for kids, it helps to plan your visits when other kids will be there to work or play with your own.
• Follow kids’ leads. You might be ready to offer kids a lecture on the miracle of germination, but often they’d rather try to coax a beetle onto a stick, or test the water pressure of the garden hose.
• Woo wildlife. Planting flowers that attract butterflies, such as zinnias, or installing a birdbath or hummingbird feeder, can lure winged visitors so fascinating that they occupy kids long enough for you to swing a sharp hoe without fear of casualties.
• Dirt happens. My son often left our garden looking like the Before image of a laundry-detergent commercial. Like vegetables, kids are washable. Only the experience is indelible.
For more resources on gardening with children, check out
www.kidsgardening.org.
—J. K. L.
44 mothering | May–June 2010
Ethan’s favorite gardening time was harvest mornings. Every Saturday, he and I would leave the house early, dew still on the grass, while my husband and 11-year-old daughter snored away at home. Beginning in mid-June, when the first young peas were ripe, gardeners would gather to pick and divide up the weekly bounty. For Ethan, searching the sprawling vines for fat, ripe cucumbers, or long-necked summer squashes that looked like geese, had the feeling of a treasure hunt. “I found another one!” he would exclaim before plunking it in the basket. Ethan and his friend Kelson also loved to yank carrots from their secret underground lairs: We taught them to look for the big ripe ones, whose orange shoulders rose above the soil. When Ethan saw his pal eating the roots, still dirt-dusted, right out of the ground, he forgot his sworn enmity for all non-cucumbers and tried one himself. “Pretty good!” he conceded. I was astonished. Unpacking on the kitchen table each week, I was
amazed at how much we were getting for our small investment: Brimming from our bushel basket was a revolving menu of peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, and more. I’m guessing we got back our initial investment ten times over. We were also introduced to vegetables— Swiss chard, purple beans—that, at the store, we usually whizzed right past on our way to the apples. As with unexpected guests you want to make feel at home, we tried to find recipes for all of them. I would never have predicted that beets would become one of my daughter’s favorite foods. One morning, Hannah actually asked,
“Could I have a roasted beet for breakfast?” Not everything was so well received. Te cabbages,
which grew like gangbusters and kept appearing in our baskets, utterly defeated me—for weeks, they rolled around reproachfully in our fridge’s crisper like disem- bodied heads. At last I guiltily chopped them up and tossed the scraps on our backyard compost pile.
I would love to be able to offer a heartwarming conclu- sion: that by the final harvest, Ethan had been converted to vegetarianism. He did learn to enjoy his self-serve car- rots, and occasionally popped in his mouth a sweet cherry tomato plucked from the children’s garden. He would eat a fresh-picked green pepper, as long as it was sliced razor-thin and doused in several times its body weight of ranch dip. He delighted in the lemon cucumbers—sunny, round little heirlooms that look like mini-gourds. I try to consider these big steps. What else did we reap from our experience? I learned that broccoli grows above ground, and many other
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