There are so many things that parents try to do to get their kids interested in things outside of their screen time. It’s nice when children have hobbies that aren’t related to Minecraft or Roblox and yet it’s not the easiest thing to do. Convincing children to get off their screens and get onto something else can be tedious for a parent.
Kids love to get messy, sticky and covered in dirt and so it makes sense that they would want to be outside and getting stuck into the mud – literally! The thing is, gardening feels like a hobby of the senior generation so convincing children to plant the newest allium bulbs and daffodils is a lot of hard work. Children can easily access their screens and TV at home or even at school, so it’s important to figure out other things that will engage them. If you want to get your children more involved in gardening you’re in the right place, because we’ve got a list of tips to help you to do it.
- Make gardening fun. From colorful tools and plenty of options to make a garden beautiful, you can make gardening a fun endeavor for your children. In fact, you could even give them a section of the garden to make their own. If you want to make the garden colorful, you can get the kids planting the right coloured flowers and the right coloured veggies. You could plant allium bulbs in one area and aubergines in the next, red peppers in one area and roses in the next. It’s so much more fun when kids do the fun things and you do the mundane gardening tasks.
- Give them their own space. As we said, allocating an area of the garden for your children to use themselves is going to help them to feel more involved. Let them hold some ownership over their specific garden bed, and then let them choose what to plant there. It’s exciting to them and they can get their creative hats on. You can start simple with a miniature herb garden to ease them in, but giving them their own space gives them autonomy over it, too.
- Buy child-specific tools. Often, children’s tools for the garden are smaller, easier to handle and painted in pretty colors. Giving your children tools that will fit their hands will make them feel more like getting involved in the garden. Larger tools and watering cans are going to be too heavy and if your children can’t physically lift the tools in the garden, they will quickly lose interest. You can find perfect garden tool hacks for kids here.
- Don’t go too big. If you get the kids in the garden and talk of transformation, you’re going to make them feel overwhelmed and you want to avoid that. It’s nice to have acres of garden to enjoy, but children are less interested in it. When it comes to gardening with children, start small and talk about plant pots first, not acres of greenery. Planting strawberries or tomatoes in pots first will get their hands dirty and let them see that they have the power to grow something big from something small.
- Get to know the seasons. The last thing you want to do is get the kids excited about planting and plant the wrong things. Kids want to see things are growing and that means making sure that you choose to plant things that are in season, whether flowers or fruits. You can also ask them what they would love to plant so that when that time of the year comes around, they will want to quickly get involved.
- Choose something that’ll grow quickly. Kids will want to get involved in gardening if they can see fast results, which means that you should choose things in your garden that’ll grow quickly. You can plant radish seeds and cress to get faster results, and you can see the happiness on your children’s faces when things finally push through the dirt.
- Make it artsy. Not all gardening endeavors are about plants and flowers. You can get the kids involved in making bird baths, bird feeders and painting the fences pretty colors. You can make the entire garden space pretty and get the children’s ideas involved in it.
- Use what you can. One of the best things that you can do during gardening with the children is to learn how to reuse and recycle where you can. Teach them to grow cress in tin cans and use yogurt pots to plant herbs. There are so many ways that your children can learn lessons in the garden and recycling is a great lesson to help them learn. You can even show them fun recycling options in the garden before you get out there so that they can have fun with it.
- Make some of the space a little wild. Weeds can strangle plants so while you don’t want to let the garden overgrow, you can still add something wild to the garden. Planting wildflowers and encouraging bugs with a big hotel can really help to attract wildlife. You can grow plants that are friendly to bees and butterflies, and you can even create a lizard lounge to bring in some reptiles. Attracting wildlife to your garden will really help you to show your children that the garden is about so much more than flower types.
- Prepare the kids for a loss. Gardens don’t always flourish and fruits and veggies can be destroyed by bugs. It’s vital that you teach your children that plants and food can die in the garden. If you prepare them for this, you can ensure that they are prepared for it to happen. It’s a good way to bring the conversation around natural death happening.
Gardens are a great space for children to thrive and you can ensure that your children are excited to be involved in their gardens where possible.
