Get Your Kids Involved in Gardening

For those who love gardening, there is nothing that inspires more pride or self-fulfillment than producing a beautiful garden. While reveling in the admiring looks your garden gets from those who see it, you may want to share your enthusiasm and love for gardening with others. There is no better audience to share your talents and knowledge with than children, and whether they are yours or not, children will come to love gardening as much as you as long as you follow these few helpful hints.

1. First of all, do not let a child's first experience in a garden be a bad one. We have all spent a great deal of time pulling weeds to protect our flowers, but even for the most devoted of us this is an unwanted and tedious task. Avoid giving a child jobs that will make them feel that gardening is a chore rather than a hobby. If the children have a good experience the first few times they are with you in a garden, the harder work that will come later will seem like a minor distraction instead of a deterrent.

2. The best place for children to start gardening is with a single plant. The best plants for children are often the ones that will grow the quickest and are easiest to tend to. Let them pot the seeds, water them, and fertilize them. It is a good idea to keep a photo diary so that the children can see the process that their plants have made.

3. A few good plants to try with children are Annual Bachelor's Buttons, Marigolds, and sunflowers and sunflowers.

4. Let them play in the dirt. Speaking from personal experience, kids love to get dirty and as long as they aren't destroying any of your precious roses there is no reason not to let them dig around and explore.

5. Most importantly make sure to always keep the experience fun. Encouraging a child to make a scarecrow or getting them their own set of children's tools will make them feel important and more involved with the whole process.

6. There is nothing better than eating food that you yourself cultivated. Between the two of you choose a plant that will produce a vegetable that the child enjoys eating. Cucumber, tomato, or pumpkin plants are all good choices, and nothing will make a child happier or prouder then picking and eating the food they helped create.

7. Eventually as the child gets older, designate a corner or patch of your garden that they can plant what they like. Don't go crazy, but allow a little bit of freedom and help them along the way. They will love having a portion of earth that is all theirs and will be that much moreinterested and concerned with making sure everything goes well.

8. No matter how hard you try to get a child interested in gardening there is likely to come a time when other interest will draw them away from it. Do not worry about this because as long as you have instilled a love for gardening you can be assured that they will one day come back to it.

By following these tips, you can be assured that you will be sharing your passion for gardening with the children around you.