Calendar of the Soul

Kids in the Garden

Planting with kids is a special adventure that carries both adults and children through joy, patience and often back to wonder.  Kids love to do real work like gardening and the best way to encourage them is to give them their own special garden space.  Make it small maybe four by four feet or three by five feet so it won't be too great of a responsibility.  If you have irrigation areas with either sun or shade that’s fine, but if not plant for a bed with afternoon shade for greatest success.  For siblings it's probably is best to give varied garden exposures so their gardens are completely different.

First help the child prepare the soil turning it over and then adding at least three inches of seasoned wood chips or organic mulch. Then ask the child to consider what kind of garden they would like to create.  Some fun ideas include a fairy garden, a dinosaur garden, or a miniature plant garden.

For a fairy garden you might want to select a site in part shade and look through the books on garden fairies.  Some garden fairies include the rose, helleborus , columbine, foxglove, dogwood, hazelnut, and lilac fairies.  You can also include a fairy mailbox that could be something as simple as a hollowed piece of log. The fairies write on little pieces of paper with green ink and then roll them up and tie them with golden thread.  Children can write to the fairies on similar small note paper and leave messages for the fairies who will either respond or rely on their emissaries to write for them. Children can create fairy beds and crowns and other accoutrements out of natural garden materials.  You can also make little paths for the fairies and small pools for bathing.

For a dinosaur garden consider plants with strong colors in blues, greens and purple (green gladiolas, penstemon midnight, iris ensata benny boton) as well as spiky plants like equisetum, phormiums and kniphofia. Prehistoric plants like the ginkgo tree for sun and tree ferns for shade would also be great if there is room. You could also mound part of the space and place rocks half buried along the crest of the mound to look like a dinosaur rising up out of the earth. Another idea would be to place a collection of plastic dinosaurs throughout the space in key locations.

For a miniature plant garden have the child create a little village with rocks and twigs; add paths and roads for miniature cars.  Really anything goes.  Make sure the garden has been mounded or has good drainage. Having the garden on a slope or in a raised bed (add lava rock or small gravel if necessary) would be best. Plant miniature plants like rock garden plants such as lewisia, low ground covers like creeping thyme and small succulents like hens and chickens. Achillea millefolium would be great for trees.

Once the soil is prepared take the garden designer (child) to the nursery and let them pick out a few plants, five or six.  In this way the responsibility for planting and care won't be too great.  Once these plants have had some time to root, return to the nursery for another five or six plants. In this way the child will be able to build on their success and experience the joy of a developing garden which is their creation.