Collection Notes

The Gardening with Kids Collection

Gardening with kids can be an adventure, as the stories in this collection attest.

Dear Gardener,

Gardening with kids can be educational, fun, frustrating, and humorous, but it’s always an adventure. Younger kids can dig or just enjoy being outside in the fresh air. Older kids can learn about weeding, how to know when a vegetable is ripe, or the difference between a honeybee and a wasp.

Gardening with kids can also be full of lessons for us adults, too. Kids can teach us that just being in the garden with your friends is fun. They remind us of the wonder that is a tiny little seed turning into a six-foot tall stalk of corn or how miraculous it is that perennial flowers come back year after year.

When T. Marie Warta’s daughter, Charlotte, saw the very first sprouts in her potted garden, “she shrieked and danced around with a level of excitement previously reserved only for birthdays and Christmas.” Similarly, Mary Ekstrand’s son, Andy, was overjoyed when the bromeliad in the family’s living room bloomed and grew a…dinosaur bud?

While “Charlotte’s Garden” and “My Dinosaur Bromeliad” are about gardens that did bloom, teacher Janeen Lewis shares a very different experience of gardening with kids in “The Little School Garden That Didn’t.” Anyone would find it challenging to take over a school garden when a Master Gardener leaves. Janeen was particularly unqualified for the job but was enticed by the idea of a harvest party with “succulent peas, tender carrots, and crisp lettuce.” Things didn’t go as planned, though, and the entire class learned an unexpected lesson about gardening.

In all, the Gardening with Kids Collection has a baker’s dozen of stories filled with humor, interesting twists, subtle wisdom, and adventure. Oh! And there’s a tomato fight between nine-year-old W. Dean Marple and his grandmother.

Enjoy the full collection and as a special bonus, find out how to plant a secret sunflower garden! It’s all here in these heartwarming stories.

Bill Dugan signature

Bill Dugan
Editor & Publisher
GreenPrints


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