Fun Ways to Start a Spring Garden with Your Kids

Growing a garden with your kids is a wonderful way to get them outside and do something meaningful. Most children love working in the garden. Digging, planting, spraying water, getting muddy – what’s not to love? The thing that most kids love best of all is watching their little plants grow and being able to pick vegetables or flowers from a plant they have nurtured with their own little hands.

The children’s garden: What they can learn

Not only are your little ones spending constructive time out of doors, but there are also a bunch of things they are learning incidentally.

• Working on their counting skills as they count spaces for the different plants.
• Learning about distances and spacing as they arrange the plants in their spring garden.
• They learn about where their food comes from and what it takes to make it grow.
• Chat about colors and shapes.
• Possibly the biggest bonus is that many children learn to be more adventurous about the fruit and vegetables they eat if they have grown them themselves.
• Teach older kids about the benefits of companion planting.

Choosing plants for the children’s garden

When choosing plants for your spring garden, grow plants that your children will enjoy. For example, flowering plants with lots of bright colors. Choose seeds that will grow quickly. The fastest-growing seeds will germinate within a week or two and bear flowers in two months. These are fun flowers for kids:

• Cosmos
• Geranium
• Marigold
• Nasturtium
• Nigella
• Pansies
• Sunflowers
• Sweet peas
• Zinnia

Vegetable gardening with your kids

Planning for a food garden? Plant vegetables and fruits that your family will actually eat. It’s easy to get excited about all the seeds and seedlings available at the nursery, but don’t waste money and time planting veggies your family won’t use. Here are a few good fruit and vegetable seed ideas for kids:

• Beans
• Carrots
• Cherry tomatoes
• Gem squash
• Peas
• Potatoes
• Pumpkin
• Strawberries
• Sweet peppers

Spring garden tips for having fun with your kids

Spending time with your children is all about building happy memories. Keep these tips in mind to have fun with your children and keep them excited about gardening.

1. Keep it brief. Children have short attention spans. Break up your gardening projects into smaller tasks you can do over a few separate sessions across a few days.
2. Include seeds that germinate quickly, so that the time it takes for them to see the fruits of their labor is not too long.
3. Keep their teeny fingers in mind when choosing seeds for your children to plant. Select seeds that are easy for them to pick with their thumb and forefinger.
4. Use brightly-colored popsicle sticks to write plant names on to mark your growing seeds.
5. Children can paint stones to decorate their gardens.
6. Encourage helpful pollinators to enter your garden. Make a bee hotel or insect hotel together.
7. Build a butterfly water feeder or puddler.

Children’s garden tools

It is ideal for your children to be safe and work with tools suited to their smaller hands. Use smaller spades and forks with smooth wooden handles. The business end of the implements should be strong enough, ideally metal, to get the job done easily without being too sharp or dangerous for the little ones to use.

Growing kids, growing memories

Rain or shine, Save.com has wonderful ideas for family activities that don't cost the earth. Whether you need inspiration for winter activities for kids or ideas for a no-spend weekend. Gardening is a fun and enriching activity for the whole family. Children love picking veggies and flowers that they have grown themselves. Pick children’s garden tools and children’s gardening books with special deals available through Save.com's coupon book finder, delivered to select areas.