When Lyssa Whirren was two, her grandfather taught her how to pick strawberries. Most of the ripe berries went into her mouth rather than her pail. But when it came time to show her mother Lyssa proudly displayed a full basket - the sly toddler had switched pails with her grandfather.
Sixteen years later, Lyssa still treasures her grandfather's legacy - a cherry tomato he planted near the house that reseeds itself every year. More importantly, Lyssa attributes her green thumb to the love of gardening he instilled in her.
Derek Fell, a horticulturalist and author of more than fourteen books on growing things, including A Kid's First Book of Gardening, believes this fascination with growing plants can easily be passed from one generation to another. "If you make gardening an adventure rather than a chore, you won't be able to keep your kids out of the garden," he says.
During the summer, when the zucchinis blossom, Fell's nine-year-old son, Derek, Jr., flits from plant to plant pollinating the male and female flowers. "Once I showed him how the bees do it, I couldn't stop him," says Fell. "He's out every morning rubbing the pollen grains from the new flowers together."
Jane Taylor, a Michigan horticulturalist and architect of the Children's Imagination Garden in East Lansing, agrees that the single most important thing in gardening with kids is making it fun. "Adults get too involved with laborious tasks like weeding," she says. "Kids instinctively gravitate toward the fun things like watering, harvesting, and eating."
Even the names children attach to plants are humorous. Fell's children nicknamed mint "the iced tea plant." They call the trumpet vine that winds its orange-red flowers up along the house "the hummingbird vine" because the tiny birds love to poke their curving beaks into the centers and sip the sweet nectar.
Turning Kids Into Gardeners
1. START EARLY
"You can introduce kids to gardening as soon as you start reading to them," says Pat Patucha, director of education at the Denver Botanic Garden. "At this age, everything is hands-on Young Children's favorite pursuits are picking, eating and playing in the dirt." Vicky, Fell's six-year old daughter, has always enjoyed picking bouquets from her family's cutting garden.
"They also adore small bugs and worms," says Alice Whirren, Lyssa's mother. "When my husband turned the soil, our children would look for worms to bring into the house to show us."
For indoor gardens, buy scented geraniums. These fragrant cousins of the familiar red flowers exude a variety of fruity smells: pineapple, coconut, rose, and apple. Children can rub the aromatic leaves on their hands.
Geraniums also add flavor to foods. The next time you bake muffins, let your child pick up a few leaves from an apple or spice geranium and place them in the bottom of the tine. The leaves will cook into the muffins, leaving residual
...
Read Full Article
|
