The Cullens: How to get kids into gardening
Mark & Ben Cullen, Special to Postmedia Network
Gardening brings generations together.
Ben will fondly remember starting seedlings inside the greenhouse as a teenager, and Mark is likely to remember the cleanup that accompanied it.
There is no shortage of ways to get youngsters involved with gardening, and the significance of doing so has increased as the digital global requires more of our attention.
Emma Biggs is a child gardener and certainly one of our youngest role models. With her dad, Steve Biggs, Emma has a new ebook written as a “youngster-to-kid guide” for buying Gardening, Gardening with Emma: Grow and Have Fun.
Emma, who is thirteen, started gardening in Grade 1, which gave her half a lifetime of gardening revelry. She explains why children and grownups garden differently—youngsters want a place to play. Mark suggests that grownups also have to learn to play in the dust. However, that is for once more.
Here are a number of the inspirations we took from Gardening with Emma:
Kids want their own space. A child-sized area will do, but it’s vital for children to feel possession over their corner or parcel of the yard. Not only does this permit children to discover the things that interest them, such as mud pies and “crazy colored lettuce,” but it also teaches them responsibility by allowing them to take complete ownership of planting and protecting their garden.
Fun plant hints for your first garden. Emma has a great deal of revelry in fast-growing annuals like zinnias, marigolds, and sunflowers, which are amusing to develop from seed and inspired her to locate more specific types. She gives recommendations on how to grow these plants, seed-starting commands, and reminders for adults, including the importance of mulch.
Eating your vegetables is much more amusing when you grow them yourself. Why not attempt to eat some weeds that otherwise take over your garden, such as dandelion, garlic mustard, and purslane? Emma likes a garnish of home-grown for eating plants with her salads, including nasturtium and bachelor’s buttons.
Bug collecting is lots of extra fun for kids. With Emma’s instructions, you could build your own “computer virus vacuum” to collect insects using your lungs. It’s fun, secure, and beneficial for defending your flowers from nasty bugs or taking pictures of precise specimens to examine.
Every part of your lawn may be colorful, including the veggie garden. Emma has excellent hints from purple tomatoes to yellow cucumbers. Emma recommends beginning your flower stand for aspiring marketers, including the satisfactory varieties to grow and the way to tie a bouquet.
Gardeners are birders, and that is authentic of child gardeners, too. Emma does a fantastic job explaining the differences among the bird’ styles you may attract to your garden and offers pointers on bringing them to your backyard. Plants, including Tithonia, can entice monarch butterflies, and pineapple sage attracts hummingbirds.
Gardening with the five senses is a novel approach and not one we consider sufficient. Emma suggests planting a “sound” lawn, such as puffy nigella seedpods, which rattle when dried, gravel pathways for dragging your toes, and dried gourds for drumming and shaking. With new nephews, nieces, and a few grandchildren in Mark’s case, we’ve observed that children like to make noise.
Giant greens are all about questioning big, and Emma is aware of humungous zucchini and supersized squash. Kids are loopy about those monsters of the lawn, which are a feat of correct gardening and imagination, two things Emma has validated youngsters have a knack for.
Emma understands kid-gardeners from a first-hand perspective. She makes an incredible case to her peers for the proper motives: a love of nature, outside play, developing, and having amusement. A concept from the following, next era.
