Griselda Kerr: Get your children gardening
By Griselda Kerr
A garden is a process, not an object – it is something never finished.
This means you can make mistakes and correct things, see things live and grow and die (possibly having been eaten by pesky pests) or see things in the wrong place and move them. It is part of the natural world; a constant rejuvenation that makes life feel purposeful and good and relevant.
Last week, walking my dog over the fields, I met a friend of mine - a Champion Farmer called Ben - and asked him what he thought about gardening. There was a pause. I held my breath. He said, looking at me very directly: “Gardening is powerful”.
What he meant was that gardening affects how you feel. If you feel grumpy or depressed or under pressure, thirty minutes doing something physical in the garden will almost certainly balance your mood. It will make you feel good, more in control, perhaps not so strung-up. The break from what you were doing gives the left side of your brain a rest from figures, logic and analytics whilst your right side of the brain, which deals with creativity, reasoning and spatial awareness takes over. It gives your brain space for thoughts and new ideas.
Gardening stimulates our imagination and our critical judgement; if ever I have a ‘light-bulb’ moment, it comes when I garden. When I feel low, I go outside and come back in feeling less under siege, less in a grump. You might have pulled up some weeds, planted some seeds, got some plants growing in the garden (perhaps tomatoes, beans, carrots or salads now it is nearly summer). You might have watered a plant that looked thirsty or you might even have decided to change the shape of a bed …. once you start it can be hard to stop!
The farmer was right: gardening is powerful. It is good for our mental health. It relaxes our brains into thinking things out in a different way. Gardening is a stressbuster. Getting your hands in the soil is to feel something dependable and strong. Gardening is full of positivity, of giving something back to the world in which we live.
And, so important too, it means we can appreciate the changing seasons, of how nature springs up, dies down and renews itself each year. It makes us feel positive about life. The undaunted power of nature never lets us down.
A beautiful scene from Griselda’s garden in Derbyshire.
How you get started with your child in the garden
What you’ll need:
A pair of gardening gloves each
A pair of secateurs for yourself
A pair of child secateurs
Two good quality hand forks – the pretty coloured ones sold for children are often useless so get a proper good quality child’s fork even if it is a bit heavier
Two garden trugs (coloured bins – any garden centre), one each
A few (plastic) plant pots for cuttings (9cm diameter will do)
A seed tray or two to plant seeds in
A set of seed modules to plant individual seeds in – perhaps some you might have collected
A small light watering can not too heavy for a child to wield
A packet of seed compost
A packet of potting compost
Design together
Look at your garden with young eyes in attendance and see what you both think is really good and which parts would perhaps work better with different heights of planting, maybe different colours or perhaps a greater depth to the bed. It need not be flower beds you are encouraging children to look at critically: this is just to ‘see’ the garden as more than ‘just an open space’.
Deadhead together
Together go round the garden cutting back faded flowers – a ten-year-old can find which flowers have begun to look past their best and that is the moment to cut them – not when they are already dead and turning brown. Cut back those flowers that are ‘just past their best’ to a lower leaf. Like roses – that all need deadheading – the flowers will regrow and flower again.
Water together
Look at thirsty plants together – pots and containers will want more water more regularly than plants in the ground. Pick up a pot and if it is light, it needs water. Stick your finger in a container and if it is dry it too needs water. Fill watering cans so they are not too heavy and water the soil around the plant, not the leaves. A watering expedition is best done in the evening so it does not evaporate in the sun during the day. When water runs out the bottom you know you have given it enough.
Take cuttings together
What is exciting for a child is to learn the magic of taking cuttings. You can take three or four inches off almost any plant you like, where you can see this year’s growth (ie: ends of stems which look a bit softer but not too floppy) and select a non-flowering stem. Nip off the lower leaves and poke them round the edge of a small pot of potting compost using a pencil to make holes for them. Firm them up and water them. There are lots of clever tips to be found on the internet to make success more likely. To grow your own plants from cuttings feels like a very powerful thing to have done. Your child can label them and sell them or give them away when the cuttings have got roots (which may take maybe a month).
Grow herbs
Make more herbs by cutting off non-flowering shoots like rosemary, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme. Push the cuttings into a mixture of sand and soil (use horticultural sand rather than sand pit sand or builders’ sand) using a pencil to make the holes. Water them and then put a plastic bag over them and keep them in the shade.
Weed together
We must all have weeds in our garden – and lots of areas we may not mind about weeds – but plants in borders do better and look better without the competition of weeds. Both of you wear gloves, (you can get children’s ones) and each have a garden fork and have a trug each and winkle out the weeds together. It is very companionable – you can even learn their country names like Shepherd’s Purse and Bittercress. You can have battles with them if they have very deep roots like dandelions and the pretty blue flowered borage (which is also called alkanet and has slightly prickly leaves to know you have the right plant).
Sow seeds together
Foxgloves, sweet rocket, sweet willliam, wallflowers – all these and more, can all be sown now to plant out in the garden in September where they are to flower next year.
Snail collection
If snails are eating your hostas, go out each of you armed with a torch and gather them in a bucket. Then take them to a field or a wood and tip them out. Better not kill them.
Griselda Kerr is Walter’s mother and the author of The Apprehensive Gardener a book about how to look after garden plants. It is available on Amazon or from Walter directly.