Plants kids love
Learning can be fun with showy flowers
If you want to engage children in gardening, provide them with plants that are more than just pretty.
Those they can smell, taste, feel and even be entertained by will grab their attention, said Gina Harris, director of youth education at the Memphis Botanic Garden.
“When we had our bog garden, the kids really liked the pitcher plants,” she said.
Pitcher plants are carnivorous. When flying insects succumb to the allure of the plants’ sweet nectar and the color of their leaves, the bugs quickly slide down the slippery surface into the watery pool at the bottom of the pitcher.
Because the insects either drown or die of exhaustion trying to escape, the plant is able to slowly digest them.
Adults and children find it so fascinating to watch the yellow flowers of the evening primrose unfurl at dusk, they have been known to pull up lawn chairs and sip iced tea as they wait for the show. I’m told it takes less than a minute to happen.
If your children are patient types, they can spend the 40 minutes or so it takes to watch a moonflower open, also at dusk. Applause is optional. If the tykes can stay up until dusk turns to night, they may see big sphinx moths flitting in and out of the fragrant white moonflowers.
Flowers that put on shows are rare, but many are delightful to touch. Who can resist rubbing their fingers over the soft fuzzy leaves of lamb’s ears? The best one for our climate is known as either Big Ears or Countess Helen von Stein.
Its leaves are larger and greener than the common variety and rarely melt down in the heat, even when placed in full sun.
The fact that it hardly ever blooms is actually a plus because lamb’s ear flowers can be more distracting than appealing.
Kids love to tickle themselves, their friends and siblings with the catkins of the chenille plant and ornamental grasses like the pennisetum “Little Bunny.”
Children who participate i n education programs offered at the botanic garden may be invited to try tasty plants in My Big Backyard such as strawberries, blueberries, carrots, mint and the abundant figs growing on bushy trees.
“Many of them haven’t ever eaten figs, but most really like them,” Harris said. “I know my own children learned to eat them here.”
Sometimes, the children are given instructions in making colonial candy, a special treat featuring sugar cubes wrapped with peppermint leaves.
They are also encouraged to rub the leaves of fragrant herbs like rosemary, lavender, pineapple mint, lemon balm and basil between their fingers to release the fruity, flowery and piney scents.
Large sunflowers always attract the attention of children, as do tiny plants like forget-me-nots and cornichon-size cucumbers.
Don’t forget to show them how the “jaws” of a snapdragon flower snap open when squeezed and how to find the “bunny” that lives in every larkspur flower.
Unlike adults, children exhibit more fascination than fear of crawling and flying creatures in the garden.
Unearthing a wiggly worm is a wonderful surprise, as is seeing butterflies and dragonflies flitting from flower to flower.
Plant monarda, butterfly weed, butterfly bush, salvia and lantana to attract butterflies.
Then give them plenty of parsley, dill, fennel and milkwood to lay their eggs on. Don’t be alarmed when dozens of caterpillars hatch and start eat- ing the plants. They’re supposed to so they too can eventually become butterflies.
UNWELCOME TREE HUGGERS
Lecanium scale insects, which are appearing this summer on the twigs of American elm and oak trees, are not among those we happily invite into our gardens.
When the crawling insects hatch from eggs laid on the twigs, they suck sap from the leaves, which can stunt growth and cause leaves to drop.
“They can dehydrate the trees,” said Dr. Mark Follis, owner of Follis Tree Preservation. “And any time an elm tree is stressed, elm bark beetles are attracted to it.”
Elm bark beetles carry the deadly Dutch elm disease, which was responsible for greatly reducing the numbers of elm trees in North America.
It was introduced in 1928 by beetles present on logs shipped from the Netherlands to furniture manufacturers in Ohio.
Elm trees, which were once the favored shade tree in America, are still around. A scraggly one grows on the edge of a wooded part of our property and deposits its tenacious progeny in my garden. It seems like I’m forever tugging at them.
Because it’s almost impossible to spray high into the canopies of large trees, Follis and other tree professionals treat scale infestations with systemic insecticides applied to the roots with a probing applicator.
He calls them a “nuisance” on oaks but more serious when seen on elms.
Contact a tree professional if you see them.