Children in the garden

Beautiful advice!  I remember having my own wee garden patch at my Grandmothers house and growing Polyanthus, also my Grandfather and Dad had vege patches, great memories and great advice to something which could be a dying past time!

Great article, and an idea Im trying to do the warmer this Spring is getting in the UK!

One tip worth adding is when it's warm enough, remember your paddling pool can double as a "dirty-toddler-dip" - who needs to drag then through the house to the bath, just make the water slightly warm, have the towels ready, even put a squirt of bubblebath in if you like. If they need a second rinse in the real bath, at least the house wont take such a bad hit!

Also, teach them from early on to check with you before they touch or eat anything in the garden. There are plenty of poisonous plants in everyones gardens, and plenty of plants can give you a rash (Im talking UK gardens here, but I bet ones elsewhere are at least as bad?), so teach them to copy you! I love tomatoes, but the leaves can be quite irritating (not to mention staining everything bright yellow) and conifer hedges make me scratch like mad. Anything with milky sap should be treated with great caution as it's generally an irritant to the skin and causes a burning sensation in the mouth or eyes. And although earth worms and snails are not toxic in the UK, I would recommend the worms get put in the compost bin (if they have to be moved at all poor things) and the molluscs (slugs & snails) are either squished or sent on a long holiday (salt water is great, they blow bubbles) rather than being eaten! There are plenty of things in my garden which could harm my kids but so far we havent had any problems, thankfully.

I just love being outside with my girls!

I love being in the garden and so do our girls.  Sadly, circumstances (my growing belly) don't allow for a comfortable time outside (for me) and we don't go out as much as I would like.

Just thought I would add a couple of things about other areas of educating the kiddies in the garden.  Have a compost heap and get the kids to help with it, especially finding worms for it.  Explain to them what it does and how you will use it on the garden later on.  Water management.  A precious resource that we need to conserve, so teach them to be water wise and plant drought tolerant plants were possible.  Pest control.  Natural forms of pest control of course, so that the kids can understand that sometimes the plants will get nibbled but there are ways of preventing damage to their hard work.

There is so much joy to be found in a garden.  It is just sad that more and more parents are preventing their kids from having a good time in the dirt these days.

Hi there,

Thanks so much for this . . My kids love to garden especially me 23 month old, she even eats the dirt!!

cheers Kellz

Great advice . excellent article..

and not sure why this got a small rating.. As you know i have 3 children, and the look of joy on their faces when they see what they have planted has grown, is priceless...

Getting down and dirty is good for their immune sysytem as well as my doc told me when my were younger,...

xx cazza