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How to make a garden friendly for small children
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Little tools make little hands happy and at home in the garden
A lot of lessons can be learned and taught in a garden, which is why it’s important to make your garden friendly for your small children. Make sure you teach them how to respect the garden rules early on and help them to see the garden not just as yours, but also theirs. Here are a few helpful tips on how to do just that.
First off, if you haven’t established obedience outside of the garden, you’re going to have a very difficult—if not impossible—time getting your children to obey you in the garden. That said, it is important that you remember to be consistent. If you tell your child not to stand in a pile of dirt, then you need to make sure you enforce that. Establish your rules in the garden early on to avoid a lot of headaches in the future.
If possible, get tools that are the right size for your little gardener to actually help you with the work. For example, we found some great tools at Ace Hardware on North Avenue. They had little watering cans that were in the shape of baby elephants. They are small enough for even a three-year-old to carry without a struggle. They also have extra small weeding gloves. Most hand tools are small enough for children to be able to use, but if you have toddlers, it helps if the tools are light as well. Our Walmart has some very nicely priced, lifetime warranteed, hard plastic tools made by Fiskar. These were only $1, which makes it easier to buy a few extra.
Another way to make your little gardeners feel at home in the garden is to have little garden furniture for you to put out there. We received a Batman table with an umbrella and two chairs last year from Grandma and Grand Kenny. This is now sitting in our garden and our children love it. Not only does this make a little cozy spot in the garden for your children, but it also enables you to have a place to seat your children when you want to do a little work on your own. Please note, you do not need to have a lot of money to do this, we have found small lawn chairs at Recycle North for a dollar, and you can look at the Burlington Craigslist to see who might be cleaning out their garages at this time of year. Either way, you can make an investment if you have it, or if you want to, but it’s also equally easy to pay very little for your garden furniture. (And Grandma wouldn’t mind me sharing that she got the batman set for a very good deal at a local flea market.) Bottom line is, it can be done.
There are lots of ways your small children can help out in the garden. You can put them to work pulling out tiny weeds, or even bigger ones depending on their strength. They will enjoy this, and you will have less weeding to do on your own. They can use their little watering cans to water the plants, or if you don’t want them to over water, you can get them to water the grass. They can cultivate soil around your plants with some good supervision, or anything else you might wish to teach them.
Find different opportunities to grow your relationship with your child or children. It will be well worth it as you cultivate their little hearts and work with them on new and different things. Make sure you weed out the bad habits with consistent practice, that way the good gardening habits can grow more and more with each garden visit. Gardening with your child is yet another great way to teach them new things and to watch them blossom into beautiful flowers who love being in the garden.
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