What you wished you’d been told about gardening with children

Today we welcome guest blogger Rochelle Johnston, the founder of Family Earth, a social enterprise that helps families heal their relationships with the natural world through mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis.

Last year we were one of the hundreds of thousands of families across Canada who planted a garden for the first time. COVID left me desperate for ways to engage my kids and not go insane while doing so. From working with children surviving trauma, I also knew that spending time with your feet in dirt and the breeze on your face, picking aphids off of spinach leaves, was medicine. And healing was what our COVID weary family needed.

While we experienced some of the expected benefits, I quickly learned that gardening with kids is not always a bed of roses. But let’s start with the roses.

Boosting veggie intake

Have you seen the new Canada Food Guide? Our family still has a long way to go to fill half of our dinner plates with fruits and veggies. But while in the garden my kids will put anything in their mouths (they are no longer toddlers, so “everything” is considerably less gross and dangerous).

Mindfulness

Watering lettuce as the sun goes down may be my idea of bliss. So, did my kids lose themselves in the greenery? Not so much. They did, however, see their mom doing just a little bit better.

Love for our planet

Between gardening and being outside every day playing in the forest, last year was the first time my kids… no, it was the first time I actually experienced the seasons. Mind. Blown. All of this deepened our relationship with mother earth and provided fodder for important conversations about why we need to take better care of her. And the eating more veggies (and less meat) thing? This is one of the most important individual actions we can take to reduce global heating.

Your kids become smarter than you

You want to know the difference between a radish, a carrot, a basil and a broccoli seedling? Ask my 5-year-old. Or how to troubleshoot a stalled rototiller? That would be my 8-year-old.

Now for the dark underbelly.

It’s not always fun

And guess who gets stuck with the not fun stuff?

It’s scary

At least for me. I’m used to being in control. It was stressful being a complete amateur and not knowing where to start. Gardening is just complex. Like going back to grad school in your 30s complex.

My kids were not always as motivated as I wanted them to be

Gardening requires discipline and physical labour. Did my kids excel at this? Not so much. Did they sometimes refuse to even come out to the garden with me? You bet. But I remember: they saw me and their dad spend all day pulling sod out of overgrown beds, shovelling manure in the sun, and struggling and sometimes failing to keep a regular watering schedule. Fingers crossed that “It’s not what you say as a parent that counts, it’s what you do.”

You sometimes fail (a lot)

And about that regular watering schedule thing… turns out it’s important. Some seedlings shriveled and I grew more moths than cabbages. But my own failures helped to put the kid’s “failures” in perspective. The seeds that were planted too deep, or watered too much. The seedlings that fell out of their trays, or were stepped on or mistaken for weeds and pulled up. We all fail. We’re human.

Now here’s the thing…

Gardening with children is not a bed of roses (who grows roses with children anyways?). But it is a bed of growth of all sorts and plants that bear fruit, if not this season, maybe next.

If I haven’t scared you off gardening with your children, and you want to learn from my mistakes and (probably more importantly) from master gardening parents who really know what they are doing, then checked out my online workshop series Growing Families. In addition to the workshops you will receive a package with all the equipment, soil and seeds you need to start your first garden!