Sunday Family Gardening in Queens, NY

Turn digging in the dirt into a lifetime of love and respect for nature.

Gardens has been always magical, fun, and full of surprises for me, so even though now I live in an apartment with no garden I would like to offer my daughter a tiny bit of experience I had a chance to have when I was as a child.

There is a natural magnet between children and the earth, whether it's making mud or discovering a sprouting seed emerge from the earth. Gardening with children, from toddlers to adolescents, opens new windows in a world dominated by technology.

Whether you are a proficient gardener or a beginner, gardening with children is your chance to get along with the Mother Nature. Don't worry about achieving perfection. Just dig in and grow something beautiful or good to eat.

Memories last longer than one season. Adults who remember a childhood spent in a garden often recall a parent, grandparent, or neighbor who steered and encouraged them to explore the natural world.

At first children just play in the garden, nibbling vegetables and picking flowers. Incorporate planting and play, and kids become more comfortable. You can teach even the tiniest child garden etiquette, such as where to walk not to stem on a plant. Later, they learn the consequences of good care: watering, weeding and cultivating.

Both chidren and adults learn patience in the garden. We have to wait for nature to take its course.

Gardening offers great opportunities for exercise, fresh air and good food.

Children often calm down when they work in the soil.

Growing own food magnifies a young person's choice of foods, a key to good nutrition. If they have grown up on home-grown and homemade food, they can taste the difference.

Most Americans live in cities and are removed from their food sources. It's just such a healthy, therapeutic thing to teach about the living soil. To eat something you produce is a worthwhile and meaningful thing.

Gardening helps children with the language, pragmatics and social skills, teachs vocabulary, type of Flora (plants) and Fauna (animals) in your neighborhood.

Though success is relative in the world of gardening, positive experiences do help sustain interest for kids.

One child learns that worms are not just slimy and gross; they are garden friends. Another practices measuring his growing corn stalk.
A third extends garden learning at the computer.
A fourth pulls a carrot from the earth, brushes it off, and eats it.

All of them have had successful experiences.

You can guide a child to have his/her own successful gardening experience, but you and they must learn from your mistakes. Celebrate wonder. The key to success and sustained interest lies within you and the little gardener with whom you plant the seeds of hope - a promise of what will come.

Quick Start:

Try to keep kid's gardens simple and a manageable size, about 6 by 10 feet.
Begin with a few seed or plant varieties that grow quickly.
Give a child tasks appropriate to his/her age and skill level. Watering is favorite.