Gardening Ideas That Your Children Will Dig!

Green-fingered celebrities Kim Wilde and Alan Titchmarsh talk to FlyingStart’s Zoe Bolton about their latest children’s projects and reveal their top tips for getting little ones gardening

Gardening is a fantastic way to encourage small children to get involved with their natural world and now that summer’s here it’s the perfect time to introduce your toddler to the great outdoors.

Making your garden an exciting, enchanting and safe place for an inquisitive child may seem like a daunting prospect but thankfully help is at hand. For parents, this comes in the form of a new book, Gardening with Children, written by former pop star and mother-of-two Kim Wilde.

“My children inspired me to write the book because they came along at the same time as my passion for gardening became ignited,” says Kim, who won gold for her garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

“I wanted to create a space that would really inspire the children to be outside and engage with nature and get them away from being inside with the television and computer games. I just think it’s much healthier for kids to be outside, to engage and be inspired by their natural world.”

For Kim, enticing her children, Harry, seven, and Rose, five, in to the garden was all about appealing to their senses:

“It’s all very well getting children to plant seeds but first of all you need to think about how they’re going to react as soon as they get into the garden,” explains Kim.

“It’s all about inspiring them, for example are they going to be bowled over by how beautifully scented some flowers are? Will they be awe-struck by the height of a fantastic herbaceous plant that towers above them? Are they going to be really chuffed to bits when they find something that they can stuff in their mouths and eat, like raspberries or a little strawberry or something?”

Planning a garden so that it attracts wildlife is also one of Kim’s recommendations and she includes a list of nectar-rich plants, such as honeysuckle and lavender, in the book. These types of plants are available from most garden centres and can make your garden a hotspot for local wildlife.

“I really wanted to get my children engaged with the natural world, so I’ve made the garden a place where butterflies really want to fly, a place where birds want to sing a lot and make a nice noise,” says Kim. “It’s a sort of magic vision for a garden but that’s me.”
Kim’s book is packed with fun gardening activities that parents can enjoy with their children, ranging from growing sunflowers and planting bulbs to making scary faces in pumpkins by scratching the features on to them as they grow.

She also recommends buying little gardening tools for children, which she says makes them feel that they have an important job to do in the garden. Kim has also recently taken this one step further by giving her children their own patches of land so that they can begin to learn more about planting.

“Rose and Harry have a couple of rose beds in the vegetable garden and on a sunny day they go out and muck about in the mud,” says Kim. “Sometimes I give them bedding plants to put in so that they begin to understand that the roots need to be in the earth and the reasons why. I suppose it’s about teaching them about the garden gradually.”
Kim says that Rose in particular has been very drawn to her flowerbed but that it’s important for parents to be realistic.

“My children’s interest in the garden comes in waves and you can’t discount the fact the computer games and My Little Pony have their part to play in a child’s life,” says Kim.

“It’s about achieving a counterbalance - if they get as much as a kick out of being in the garden as they do playing with their toys then I think I’ve achieved something.”
Children’s interest in gardening will no doubt be given a boost by Gordon the Garden Gnome, a new animated television series aimed at children between the ages of three and six, which was first broadcast on CBeebies and CBBC at the beginning of June.
The programme, which features the voice talents of television gardener Alan Titchmarsh, follows the adventures of ecologically-minded garden gnome Gordon and his animal friends as they try to solve problems such as a water shortage, an impending storm and a garden full of leaves.

“When they approached me to do the voice I thought it was an interesting fit because there’s a lot of Gordon in me. His attitude to plants and flowers are me - and he likes to be thought of as a good gardener,” explains Alan.

“I think Gordon’s enthusiasm for the garden, his love of plants and doing his job are contagious. Hopefully, he’ll make the garden seem a friendlier place where children will want to be.

“Gordon’s funny and the ability to make kids laugh is a good thing but it’s his love for nature that shines through. I hope that because kids will like him they’ll start to share his love of nature.”
Gordon’s catchphrase is “Let’s Get Mucky!”, which Alan says echoes his own belief that children should be encouraged to take part in hands on activities in the garden. He suggests that parents should give children their own area in the garden and make sure that it is a place where growing conditions are optimum so that children will be able to see the results.
“Make sure that you give your child the best bit of soil in the garden that way they will have the best conditions for success,” says Alan.

“Try planting primulas or pansies so that children can see how many flowers grow and by picking the faded ones off how many more come. It’s also quite simple to help children
grow some things from seeds for their own dinner plate - something like a lettuce or perhaps even tomatoes.”

Alan, like his character Gordon, is also dedicated to ecology and the environment. Along with his wife Alison he runs a Garden for Schools initiative, which has provided money for gardening and wildlife projects in over 171 primary schools. But he also encourages parents to start getting their children interested in nature and the countryside at home.
“There’s plenty that parents can do and small projects can be really good for children,” says Alan.

“It’s fun to pick common wildflowers like clover, daisies and dandelions, press them and put them into a collection. But it’s not just about plants. Being outdoors itself is an educational experience because the magic and mystery of nature is all around us.”

Gordon the Garden Gnome is shown daily at 8.30am on CBeebies and CBBC2 and repeated at 12.30pm and 4.30pm on CBeebies. Kim Wilde’s book Gardening with Children is available from bookshops priced £14.99.