Dig In!

Get your knees dirty and your kids energized in the garden this spring.

By Barbara Freeman

Let's face it: digging in the dirt with kids isn’t always the easiest way to spend time with them. It sets you up for some pretty serious laundry issues. It puts you and the children face to face with creepy-crawlies. And it can mean devoting a portion of your yard, or your windowsills, to an endeavor that might not win you the curbside-appeal award. 

So why bother? The answer is simple: Gardening teaches lessons that kids can’t learn anywhere else. It’s good for their minds and bodies. And it helps them draw the connections between the food they eat and the planet we all inhabit. Lessons learned in the garden, says Beth Zschau, educator at the Sedgwick Gardens at Long Hill, a Trustees reservation in Beverly, “carry through to caring for the environment, acting responsibly, and understanding our role as caretakers of the Earth.”

Long Hill may be best known for its beautiful and elegant formal gardens, which have been a horticultural classroom for 60 years. But the reservation is also home to a children’s garden with flowers, vegetables, blueberries, a digging space, and a child-sized potting bench. It’s a place where parents, grandparents, and children come every day, throughout the growing season, to dig in the dirt together. Family programs there focus on discovery, with plenty of room for play. And that’s the best thing of all about gardening: it’s fun!

We all want to get our knees muddy once in a while, and helping our children tend plants, dig holes, or examine butterflies can be a chance to really let loose and enjoy the moment. For children, gardening offers a totally different kind of escape from what school recess or video games or sports can provide – and the rewards are different, too.

Plant a Seed, Watch It Grow

I have a photo of my now-grown children when Abbey was three and Zack five, in the pumpkin patch they (we) planted. They’ve plunked themselves on the ground, both with delighted smiles, pretty much hugging one of the larger fruits of their labors. Though they’re in their twenties now, it remains one of my favorite photos. 

Kids are justifiably proud, and eager to partake, when their efforts in the garden pay off. I knew a little boy who existed almost entirely on peanut butter and crackers until his parents helped him plant a small garden. Before long, he was proudly munching on greens and other produce he’d grown. Meg Connolly, Trustees educator at Weir River Farm in Hingham, has seen the same phenomenon again and again.

Connolly says parents are “amazed when their children come home with dirty snap peas squirreled into their lunch bag or a half-chewed raw onion. They of course want to know how it is that they will magically eat veggies out of the garden, but not ones from the supermarket. I know that there is really nothing magic to it. The children feel pride in growing something themselves.” 

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