A Child's Garden

I have two cherry "Tumbling Tom" tomatoes (one red and one yellow) that I grew from seed planted in $3.00 Lowe's all-purpose buckets on my back patio. The stems are heavy with little green fruits, and my kids and I go to look at them every day, eager for them to ripen. We have little red strawberries ripening in a strawberry pot, and several blueberry bushes with their very first crop of blueberries. They are ripening three or four at a time, and we go pick them and eat them together. I have a poor, suffering raspberry bush which is still in its original container and has yet to be planted, but it is giving me fruits despite its neglect. My oldest daughter, R, picks the ripe raspberries before anyone else has a chance. I also have yet to bring a single sugar snap pea into the house, because she eats them straight off the vine. The other day, she said to me, "It's fun to pick our food when it's ready." At that moment, nothing could have delighted my heart more. I love gardening, and have secretly been hoping that my kids would take an interest in it, too. I never mention gardening because I know if they feel forced to like it, they'll end up hating it. Instead, I just try to let them approach me about it. They'll just be playing the yard, and I'll be digging or weeding, and they come to see what I'm up to, and before I know it, they are digging the holes for my squash seedlings and wanting to see how much the plants have grown over night.

I feel that gardening is the most wonderful hobby to share with children. It is full of important lessons. Not just about where their food really comes from, but also lessons about patience, consistency, and hard work. There is no such thing as instant gratification in gardening...it's all about work up front and delayed reward. Gardening also teaches lessons about planning and working towards a goal. But gardening is more, even than that. It is a subject that directly relates to learning in all areas: young children can learn directly about the weather and how it affects the earth, they can learn basic math by counting how many seedlings you've transplanted, or the number of days until the harvest. They can learn about ecosystems, bugs and birds, predators and prey. Older children can learn about germination, photosynthesis, plant reproduction, even genetics, all by toodling around in the garden. They can practice geometry by helping to build raised beds. Gardening even provides lessons for the right lobe of the brain! I recently read about an idea of a "nature notebook"....a little pad of paper on which children can draw pictures of flowers or bugs they've seen, write descriptions, then take them home and look them up. Even though my girls can't draw very well now, I think they would enjoy that.
Many of my gardening plans have not come to fruition this year, but I'm learning all the time, so hopefully next year will be a very productive one. But big or small, I'm just glad that I can share it with my children.

And speaking of children and gardens, check out A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (you know, that guy who wrote Treasure Island). It's a collection of wonderful poems for children, usually with beautiful illustrations. I happen to love the illustrations by Tasha Tudor, but there are so many different versions that you can find something to suit any taste.