3 Ways to Teach Kids to Love Gardening

Most kids these days would rather be tapping away on a computer keyboard or waging war against monsters on their Xbox. Ask them if they want to spend some time outside, enjoying the fresh air and learning more about their environment, and you will probably be met with a blank expression. You shouldn’t give up, though, because fresh air is good for them and anything you can do to foster a love of gardening now will stand them in good stead for the future.

Make Gardening Interesting and Fun

In order to encourage kids to enjoy gardening you need to make it interesting and pitch activities to their level of understanding. Older kids might be persuaded to help out with some digging in the borders or some other type of manual labour, but younger kids won’t be able to do anything of that nature. However, small children will enjoy harvesting vegetables, planting seedling and picking flowers. So if you want to teach your kids all about gardening, here are a few simple tips and activities you can all do together.

A Flower Growing Competition

There is one type of flower that is universally appealing to children of all ages: the sunflower. Sunflowersare incredibly easy to grow from seeds and once fully grown, they can reach a seriously impressive height. Young kids love to grow sunflowers, so why not have a sunflower growing competition? Give each family member a sunflower seedling and plant it in a pot (to make it even more fun, let your child decorate his pot before the seedling is planted).

Sunflowers, like any other flower, need careful tending in order to achieve optimum growth. This is a great opportunity to teach your child about the importance of looking after plants and other living things: as long as they water their seedling, it will grow into a beautiful flower. And once the sunflowers have reached their full height, you can see which flower is the tallest!

Give Your Child a Garden

A good way to encourage a love of gardening is to let your child have their very own patch of garden. Pick a small plot in the sun that will be easy for them to take care of. Or, if you don’t have much of a garden, let them have a window box or large container where they can grow flowers or herbs. Allow your child to choose from a selection of seeds and then help them to sow the seeds. Watching seeds germinate and then grow into mature plants is exciting and a great science lesson to boot.

You might also wish to buy your child his or her own gardening tools and equipment – visitGlut.co.uk for gardening gifts to suit all ages. Child-sized watering cans, hand forks and spades are all perfect for little green fingers, and the more you make gardening fun, the more likely they are to cultivate a passion for growing plants outdoors.

Always supervise younger children in the garden, especially if there are toxic garden pesticides stored in sheds and other buildings outdoors.