GROWING GARDENERS
Ways to get kids involved outdoors
At ages seven and nine, Cohen and Kale are optimistically dreaming of innovative ways to plant their garden this year. They asked their mom if they could mix seeds in a ball of mud and throw the ball into a tree. It seemed like a good way to plant their garden quickly.
Are your kids whining about the lack of plug- ins outdoors for their gaming gadgets? Do you wish you knew how to motivate kids ( or grandkids) to create their own version of seeded soil balls just to get them outside?
In his new book, Grow Gardeners, Kid- tested Gardening with Children: A 4 step Approach, author Steven Biggs says we can “imprint kids with a lifelong love of the garden. When they realize the garden is a fun place to be, kids will eagerly help. As adults and supervisors, we can help them discover the fun to be had in the garden through playing, exploring, collecting and growing.”
As a grandmother with three grown kids who love to garden and five grandchildren including Cohen and Kale who plant their own gardens, I endorse Biggs’ approach.
Allowing space to grow and being there in the garden to demonstrate and model gardening is probably the best way to encourage the natural hunting and gathering behaviour kids display when they are young. Being open to ideas like creating soil balls or picking cherries off bushes in back alleys lets their imagination and energy fly.
I met Biggs’ daughter Emma when I was writing my book No Guff Vegetable Gardening, with her dad, Steven. Emma was almost six when she told me in a very serious way that we needed to tell people that pumpkins take a lot of space and that they can fill up the whole garden. I could see she was already using her knowledge of plants to negotiate a bigger space in her dad’s garden.
The elder Biggs, a lifelong gardener, believes the four steps to growing gardeners described in the new book he wrote with Emma will help everyone get the kids unplugged and outside. His four steps are Play, Explore, Collect and Grow.
CULTIVATE PLAYING:
Biggs thinks the best way to cultivate play is by being playful. He recently bought his three kids stacks of straw bales to use as giant building blocks and they are building forts of straw in their big back yard. Later, he will turn these bales into gardens and use them as mulch for his vegetable garden.
CULTIVATE EXPLORING
Biggs encourages exploring in the wild, in parks and in the garden and he uses the example of squirting maple keys from Silver maples. If the seeds of these Calgary hardy trees are picked early, the seeds can be pressed and squirted on unsuspecting friends. Biggs believes “Our job is to nurture curiosity and encourage kids to use all five senses: Taste, touch, sight, sound and smell.”
CULTIVATE COLLECTING:
In the spring Biggs takes his kids out on walks to look for morel mushrooms, rocks, bugs, sticks and seed pods. Insects found while gardening often lead to further exploration by Biggs’ youngest son Keaton, who now collects bugs everywhere but especially in the garden.
Emma, at age 10, likes to collect pine cones and milkweed for crafts and projects. Alberta gardeners and scroungers can find morels in Aspen woodlands but they are tricky to spot and seem to hide in plain sight.
I found my first morel clinging to the side of old wooden garden beds in my garden. Collecting morels in open baskets lets the spores fall back to the ground and reseed the next generation.
CULTIVATE GROWING:
“If you are a gardener, chances are that children will see you gardening and simply ask to help,” says Biggs in Grow Gardeners. “I remember the first packet of tomato seeds I chose as a child. It had a yellow tomato on the front. And I remember the anticipation I felt before my mom put the first ripe yellow tomato on the kitchen table.” Biggs makes a living today writing and speaking about gardening while raising his kids as the stay- at- home dad.
My daughter Chelsie is also a stay- at- home parent and a paid gardener who loves to introduce her three children to the wonders of nature in their own backyard through gardening. When my grandchildren visit they want to explore and dig in my garden. Another grandson, Rupert, was only two when I had him help me plant garlic and look for bugs with a magnifying glass.
As my grandkids get older they noticed something else about gardening. Some people don’t garden and they are happy to buy from people who do, so Mali, Kale and Cohen set up their own personal fundraiser in my boulevard when they were over for visits last summer. And that added a fifth idea to Biggs list of four. The kids learned the financial side of gardening through sales.
EPILOGUE:
There is no age barrier to learn gardening and I encourage people ages two to 92 to grow something that is meaningful to them. If you love to eat strawberries, learn about growing fruit. If you love salad or herbs — start a single pot or plot this summer.
When my granddaughter, Mali, was three she shared the lettuce and basil right out of my greenhouse and her friends went home and told their moms how good it was. There were some pretty surprised moms who had been trying to introduce salad to their four year- olds for quite a while. They just hadn’t thought to introduce it via their gardens.
In a safe environment anything is possible. Even as Cohen and Kale finalize their seed bomb plans they know their mom and grandma are growing plants the traditional way and there will be plenty of the food they love, regardless of their unorthodox methods.
Like Biggs’ children, they are growing up in a garden of opportunities. If you want to grow a keen gardener this summer just do it.
Emma is doing the blog for the book she co- wrote with her dad so check out Emma’s blog at growgardeners.com.