A top crop of gardening books to inspire young growers to get their own hands dirty
IN the run up to National Children’s Gardening Week (May 23-31), here’s a selection for all ages of children to help them dig for victory.
GARDENING WITH EMMA by Emma Biggs (Storey Publishing, £14.99)
KIDS can relate to other kids, right? So this fun guide, written by the 14-year-old gardening ace who has her own blog, should tick the boxes.
With a little help from her dad, Steve, she offers simple projects, from step-by-step bug catchers to growing all your pizza ingredients.
Raising the coolest plants is also a big focus of the book.
She features everything from species that tickle and make noise, to vegetables ranging from the tiniest to colossal, providing lots of useful know-how about soil, sowing, and caring for a garden throughout the seasons, along with ways to make play spaces among the plants.
Aimed at eight to 12-year-olds.
RHS GET GROWING by Holly Farrell (Frances Lincoln, £14.99)
THIS easy-to-use family guide to gardening covers everything from how plants work to identifying them, growing easy fruit and veg and getting children to take part in creating wildlife gardens.
If your child is arty, the book offers projects showing them how to decorate clay pots and coasters. If they’re interested in food, there’s an array of suggestions, from how to grow edible flowers to designing a herb garden. They might need help from an adult to start off, but the activities aren’t difficult and should help them reconnect with nature.
I ATE SUNSHINE FOR BREAKFAST by Michael Holland and illustrated by Philip Giordano (Flying Eye Books, £14.99)
EXPERT ecologist and educator
Michael Holland shares this brightly illustrated guide to plants around the world, enabling children to become more acquainted with their leafy neighbours and showing how
plants help create everything from rubber to honey.
It features DIY projects for young gardeners including the fun-filled messy business of creating cornflour slime; exploring the effects of freezing conditions on deciduous and evergreen trees as well as collecting seeds from the foods you eat.
UNDER YOUR FEET by Dr Jackie Stroud (DK in association with RHS, £9.99)
THIS book for slightly younger readers is awash with fantastic facts about soil, worms and other organisms, cleverly punctuated with illustrations in earthy shades, along with things your children didn’t know about the secret world underground.
Did your child know, for instance, that worm poo in soil helps plants grow?
Or that ant colonies can join up to form supercolonies stretching thousands of miles? The book takes an entertaining look at how animals build their homes under the ground and how plants survive in adverse conditions.