Little Green Fingers - Children in the Garden

It doesn’t matter what you start the kids with, it could be as small as a cherry tomato in a pot on the verandah through to them making a scarecrow for their veggie patch or giving them their own plot to play with. They key is to encourage and share the experience with them. As a child I was the perennial pest to my Nana, she took me under her green fingered apron and encouraged me to join her in the garden. She must have had the patience of a saint. We would pick flowers, vegetables, and sneak out to the berry patch and gorge ourselves on fresh raspberries and then sit on the lawn making daisy chains.

Ten top tips for kids.

1. Berry patch – kids love strawberries and they are very easy to grow, choose a position in full sun, and plant into Strawberry Mix, you can even plant the berries straight into the bag, keep moist and watch the crop appear, then disappear into the mouths of the little ones.

2. Pot project. Ask the kids to decorate a pot and choose a plant of there choice they want to grow. The butterfly bush is a neat one to try, it shows the life cycle of the butterfly through from the caterpillars eating the leaves through its cocoon stage then hatching.

3. Pumpkins are a fun project, which can be trained along a fence or its allowed to ramble over an empty area, as the pumpkins start to form carve a name or picture on the pumpkin skin. Hold a family competition for the biggest, smallest, ugliest or even funniest looking pumpkins.

4. Scarecrow, make one using old colourful clothing, decorate the head with buttons, a hat and old sunglasses and place in the garden to keep the birds away.

5. Sunflowers are quick and easy summer flower to grow, simply sow seeds directly into the soil in a sunny spot. Young plants will appear in a week or two.

6. Bug watch, offer rewards for the capture of bad bugs such as slugs, snails and white butterflies. Choose slug baits that are not toxic like Quash, to lay around plants round the garden keeps them, the plants and your animals safe. Help kids discover new garden friends such as ladybirds and bumble bees.

7. Water, kids love it and it’s the back bone of a garden. Explain how important water is to the garden and help them make water capturing systems with buckets or bottles to save rain water or to contain used bath water for the garden. Show them by using Saturaid water granules how the soil won’t dry out as quickly.

8. Flowers appeal to kids, choose brightly coloured types and plant. Pick bunches for the table, for a friend even the teacher; show them what the joy of a bouquet can bring.
Sand saucers are a fun and easy activity. Simply fill a saucer with moist sand, choose small types of flowers and arrange in patterns.

9. Gardening tool kit, fit them out with there own gloves, small tools and wheelbarrows, so they don’t need to steel yours. Choose brightly coloured ones in case they get left behind a bush or in the sandpit somewhere. Include a copy of the renowned, Tui NZ Kids’ Garden Book, its the perfect resource to start the kids off (and maybe teach you a thing or two at the same time)

10. Cash crops, pocket money is always in demand, if space is available, dedicate an area of the garden for a crop kids can grow to sell such as corn. Cobs sell for a $1 or two and offer a reward for the effort. Picking excess lemons, apples or bunches of herbs to sell at the gate or the local farmers market can be fun cash crops too.

What ever they choose to do, choose a project, make it fun and all about the journey into the joyous world of Mother Nature.