As spring advances and you become more occupied with your gardening, don’t forget to let your children or grandchildren in on this rewarding activity. If you sow the seeds when your children are young, you will cultivate in them an interest in gardening that could last a lifetime.

It is important when gardening with children to know their capabilities and their limitations. In her book, Learn and Play in the Garden, Meg Herd gives good advice on age appropriate garden activities and chores. The following information is adapted from Herd, who affirms, “A garden is a wonderfully interesting and exciting place in which children can play, work, and learn…Emphasis is on learning through fun.”

Toddlers (ages 2 to 3) are constantly learning through touch, smell and taste so it is important that they be well supervised in the garden. At this age they enjoy picking flowers and vegetables, “gardening” with toy garden tools, and watering seedlings with a watering can or hose.

Beginning at around four years of age, children enjoy planting seeds and transplanting seedlings. They also like to help prepare recipes using their own produce. They are interested in the different parts of plants and learning the function of each. Herd suggests giving children ages 4 to 8 a pair of safety scissors to use for deadheading flowers, trimming grass, and cutting blossoms to enjoy inside.

From about age 8, not only can children do most of the gardening themselves but, in addition, they have an opportunity to learn more complex concepts from the garden and from the creatures who inhabit it.

Herd gives some additional pointers to help parents or grandparents make gardening an enjoyable pastime for children.

1. Give children a good garden site in which to work – don’t relegate them to the worst area.

2. Guide them in the necessary tasks without doing them yourself.

3. Encourage children to use their senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste in a hands-on approach to gain a more thorough knowledge of nature.

4. Remember that children have shorter attention spans than adults. Because of this, don’t pressure them to keep working for the day if they’ve obviously lost interest. And try to select some fast-growing seeds for them to plant so they see results sooner.

My children loved the vegetable garden when they were growing up. David still remembers helping his dad strip the sod off the area we had chosen for our new garden when we moved to Illinois. Somehow, their eyes were bigger than their muscles and our dream of a small garden grew instantly into one that yielded everything from broccoli to sweet corn. But what memories we have, like the first time we encountered corn smut – a hideous, swelling, black fungus feared by Americans but prized in Mexican cuisine and sold in gourmet markets. Or the sunflower we watched daily as it grew to twelve feet, only to have some mysterious creature of the night make off with its flower head.

In these days when time is at such a premium, gardening with your children or grandchildren can be special quality time together. And somehow, sharing something you love with another brings you closer together and encourages good conversation. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for with those little people that are special in our lives?