Kids Gardens

Put your creativity to work and get your favorite youngster excited about gardening.

Include some kid-friendly features in this season’s garden to get your children, grandchildren, or neighborhood kids to share your gardening passion.

Create a teepee of stakes covered with pole beans. Use the teepee to shade leaf lettuce planted below or better yet let the kids use the space for their summer hideout. You might even find them munching on a few of the green beans.

Include a sunflower maze to create a colorful play zone for all to enjoy. Or use the maze to help move kids from one planting to another or from the backdoor to the compost pile or garbage cans. A colorful maze may be just the trick to get the kids to take out the trash.

Or give your children a space of their own. Let them plan, plant and harvest their own garden. I did this for my daughter when she was 7. Once her garden was planted she asked for a 10 foot high fence to keep her parents not the deer and rabbits out.

A bit more information: Work together to create a miniature landscape in a vacant garden space or container. Construct a house of popsicle sticks, scarp lumber, or old plastic containers. Include some outdoor furniture you make or purchase at a thrift shop. Then use colored stones or mirrors for ponds, bottle caps for stepping stones, and other recycled, purchased or homemade items to decorate the space.