How to Get Kids Into Gardening

It is safe to say that any parent or grandparent who loves plants hopes to instill a similar passion in their children or grandchildren. (Mostly because weeding is tedious, and outsourcing that work to a child is much less expensive than a maintenance crew!) Gardening can benefit young minds in endless ways, at almost any age.

Gardening with Toddlers

When a child is old enough to walk, or even crawl, they are old enough to start playing in the garden. Your front or back yard offers the perfect place to develop both gross and fine motor skills for your toddler.

The child with boundless energy will be happy to run through the sprinkler or jump in leaves; these activities provide them physical benefits while and you the chance to work through your to-do list, too. Water the grass and garden, then build your toddler’s strength and control by letting them wrestle with the hose. (An afternoon nap is nearly guaranteed this way.) Grasping a spray nozzle will build hand strength important for pencil grip and scissor skills later.

Similarly, using child-sized hand tools like trowels allows them to practice fine motor skills and coordination. Managing tools like rakes can also help them develop strength and balance. Particularly daring parents can hold their breath as their preschoolers manipulate pruners or loppers.

The garden also puts the brain to work. It’s a visual calendar for young children—use it to reinforce the seasons of the year, observing changes in temperature, seasonal blooms and stages of foliage. Meanwhile, fuzzy leaves, squishy soil and fragrant flowers all contribute to the child’s ever-expanding sensory library.

Toddlers are developing self-worth and a healthy sense of pride. Creating a plan with the child—setting a goal, describing the tasks and congratulating them on their achievement—can provide them with a valuable sense of accomplishment. When shopping for supplies for your garden, bring your adorable assistant along. Depending on your flexiblility, ask them what colors they would like to see in the garden. Can you incorporate some of their vision somewhere, even if only as a container or an annual?

Elementary Schoolers

The curriculum connections between the garden and grade school. Most elementary students will learn the parts of a plant, its growth stages and the life cycle of a butterfly. When a classroom lesson can jump from the textbook to a planter, it will be more profoundly learned.

As children advance in school, they will likely learn more about the Columbian exchanges and can consider the historical footprint in their gardens—which plants are native and which are not. This is also a great springboard to connect the garden to their plates. Incorporating herbs, fruits and veggies grown in the home garden may nurture a more adventurous eater.

Perhaps most importantly, planting a seed and waiting—for the first leaf to emerge, for the plant to grow, for a flower to bloom—teaches children delayed gratification. When an activity shows children that rewards are sometimes best won with patience, it reinfoces a critical life skill.

Tweens

When kids reach adolescence, their involvement in the garden can become more personal. My very informal Facebook poll indicated that people who in childhood had a spot of land they could call their own and plant however they liked look back wistfully on that first chance to garden and to personalize the space. Give a middle schooler a plot. Let them express themselves with plants and with artwork like painted poetry or kindness rocks, and show them how to steward the space.

Adolescents can also take on bigger tasks that require a bit more muscle. Building raised beds or garden fencing allows them to design and implement bigger plans and to appreciate the hard work of manual labor. This is a good age for children to also learn composting—how it feeds the garden and helps us minimize waste.

Teens

By high school, a child can begin to make more sophisticated connections between the garden and the world beyond. Seeing a garden that is impacted by extreme temperatures or increasing rainfall or drought (depending on where one lives) makes a discussion about climate change relatable and personal. High schoolers can more carefully consider the impacts of habitat loss and pollution. Most simply, anyone who has labored—emotionally and physically—on growing just one tomato will better appreciate the convenience and relative security of the food supply at the local store.

Curriculum connections at this age exist, too. Math and chemistry lessons abound: calculating volumes of mulch needed, testing the pH of the soil, even manipulating hydrangea colors. High school curriculums often teach photosynthesis; fall colors are an IRL demonstration of that lesson. High schoolers can also begin to have a more sophisticated interpretation of the art in landscape design. Looking at differences in texture, color and shape can be a way for them to develop a more nuanced ability to observe art and beauty, both natural and manmade.

All Ages

Gardening can teach children of any age basic yet valuable life lessons. Landscapers work hard, and that hard work deserves respect. Patience really is a virtue. And perhaps most importantly, in a garden, as well as in life, things don’t always go as planned. A blueberry bush can suddenly die of root rot. A squirrel can insist on ruining every tomato just before it’s ready to be picked. Every gardener is a frustrated gardener from time to time, but acceptance of that reality can help growing minds develop resilience and confidence.