Fun gardening activities for kids. You may also enjoy this post on planting a container garden with kids.
Some links on this site are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Click on the images and blue text to be taken to links. Thank you! Learn more.
Spring is here, and gardening is a wonderful way to spend time outside with your children! We have been reading The Curious Garden, which is one of my all-time favorite picture books for kids. This wonderful book is guaranteed to inspire you to get outside and plant something! To go along with this book, I am sharing some gardening fun for kids inspiration – simple ways to garden with your kids from spring through summer!
Gardening Fun for Kids
What You'll Find on This Page
In The Curious Garden, a boy named Liam lives in a city where there is nothing green. The city is so grey and drab that everyone spends their time indoors – except for Liam. One day, Liam comes across some plants growing on an abandoned railroad. Liam nourishes the plants, and over time the city is transformed! This book is inspired by the real-life High Line Park in New York City! The book is wonderful – I read it to a group of eight-year-old boys last night, and they were absolutely captivated.
I find that children are naturally attracted to gardening and plants – it is the parents who are overwhelmed! Here are some simple and fun ways you can garden with your kids:
Plant a Seed
You really can plant just about any seed and start a garden! Yesterday we planted basil after reading this book with Johnny and a group of his friends – that is what is in the seemingly empty cup in the photo above.
The plant with leaves is a Wisteria plant that my ten-year-old daughter Emma is growing. She saved a seed from the tree that is in the middle of our building courtyard, and then germinated the seed by placing it in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel and taping that to the window. She decided to transplant it after Johnny planted his basil seed – hopefully it continues to thrive!
Grow Grass
I had originally planned for Johnny and his friends to grow grass – a very fun planting activity for children! I switched to basil because I couldn’t find any seeds in the stores I checked that weren’t coated in fertilizer. I know you CAN get them, because I have found them before, but I needed seeds for yesterday and basil is equally fun to grow – especially since you can use the leaves to make your own pizza or pasta sauce!
Start Spring Plants
It might be too cold to plant outside where you live, but you can start seedlings inside! The kids loved doing this when we lived in Massachusetts – especially since I always let them help me choose which plants to add to our garden. You can use this life cycle of a green bean plant toy to help children track the growth of plants.
Grow a Fairy Garden
Someday I hope to put together a proper terrarium; in the meantime my kids love creating fairy gardens out of whatever plants we have growing! My kids are particularly fond of building fairy villages around tomato plants; trees also make wonderful foundations for fairy villages.
What are your favorite ways to enjoy gardening with kids?
Today’s post is part of Trisha’s wonderful Storybook Science series. Click on the button above to follow along throughout the series! This is my third contribution to the series – you can find my other posts here:
Do you have a picture book about gardening that we should read?
Share comments and feedback below, on my Facebook page, or by tagging me on Instagram. Sign up for my newsletter to receive book recommendations, crafts, activities, and parenting tips in your inbox every week.
MaryAnne lives in Silicon Valley with her Stanford professor husband Mike and their four children. She writes about parenting through education, creativity, and play. Mama Smiles - Joyful Parenting is a space to share crafts, hands on learning activities, and family outings that enrich lives and bring families together.
The book sounds amazing! I love that it’s inspired by a true story. It’s a great book to get kids interested in gardening.
Gardening can be so much fun! I was raised in the city where we did not have our garden, but I am happy to have our backyard now!
We have been adding lots of plants to our garden – it’s hard work but makes us all happy to enjoy the results. :) A fun way to get plants is via local online classified ads.
I’m excited to check out this book, and to get those seedlings started inside. Growing things with kids is the best!!
I’m not so much a parent who’s intimidated, as a parent who has no skill. I’ve tried several times to garden, but I’m an indifferent gardener at best. So my gardens are rather lacking. My daughter however seems to have inherited the gardening skill from her grandma.
Hooray for one green thumb in the family!
I love The Curious Garden too! I can’t wait until we can start our garden. It’s nice outside today but it’s supposed to snow on Sunday so I think we have a few more weeks before we can plant anything here in Boston!
Great post! I feel privileged to live in Africa where we can grow things SO easily without any fertilizer or anything. It’s wonderful!