A Child's Garden

When my daughter was born I worked hard to assure that when my wife took her outside she could ‘toddle’ without anything poking her feet. So I sprayed for weeds and fertilized - a lush yard was the end result.

I didn’t stop there.

My daughter loved flowers so I made sure there were plenty to look at and I made it policy to have enough flowers that she could pick them at will.

When she was four, her brother joined us. He liked the flowers too, but I decided that his idea of finger food needed a new outlet - so I started plots of strawberries and raspberries. Then I added cherry tomatoes to my regular garden.

Today that little girl is eleven and her brother is seven and they still love to pick flowers for mom and they enjoy being able to play in their bear feet while picking snacks from the garden.

It’s not uncommon to find their faces stained with berry juice as they hand a bouquet of tulips, daffodils, lilacs and blue flax (that’s the current bouquet) to my wife.

They’ve enjoyed the flowers so much that I made each of them a special flower bed just for them. They’ve been able to choose what flowers we would plant and what sort of landscape material we would use (for my daughter it’s aged wood, a bird house that looks like an outhouse and a few moss covered stones, for my son it’s a bumble bee with wings that flap in the wind and a few decorative signs).

I guess my encouragement would be to allow your children to enter into your love for gardening and the outdoors. They do much better if there isn’t a hands-off policy. Give them some ownership in your landscape garden design and watch them flourish.