Family Time: Gardening With Your Kids
What better way could there be of getting kids out in the fresh air, then by encouraging them to get their hands dirty? Whether you've got a large garden or nothing more than a windowsill, gardening is great fun and good exercise; it's even educational! Garden designer Tiggy Salt offers some great tips for giving children green fingers.
Be Prepared!
Give your child a little section of the garden to make their own. This could be anything from a flower pot or window box, to a section of the vegetable patch. The important thing is for them to have their own special space in which to start experimenting with planting some of their favourite plants. A good idea is to give it a boundary with pebbles or stones or peasticks, so that it is clearly defined and looks neat and pretty.
Tools For The Job
Make sure they've got a little tool box to keep all their gardening things in. This way they'll know exactly where all their things are and you can make sure none of them go wandering. To begin with, kids will need a hand trowel and fork for digging and planting, a ball of string to tie back plants, some wellington bots or waterproof shoes for muddy work, a bucket, a rake and maybe some chocolate bars to keep them going when the work gets tough!
Where There's Muck...
Start making a compost heap. There are all sorts of boxes available on the market, depending on what size garden you have. Compost is made up of organic matter, which means anything that once was alive, so all your scraps of food which you can't manage to finish can be thrown on the heap. They won't be going to waste, but to the good cause of creating food for your garden.
Feathered Friends
Put up a bird table somewhere in the garden, hopefully in a spot that you can see from your house, as it's lovely to be able to watch birds and animals feeding from your table. They are more likely to feel brave enough to take the food if they don't feel too closely observed, so you can stay indoors where it's nice and warm while watching them feed outside. Birds and squirrels, particularly in the cold months, are in desperate need of fats and seeds, so they will love nuts rich in oil like peanuts and coconuts and bits of bacon rind.
Eggcellent Idea
Keep all your cardboard egg boxes. They make perfect little planting pots for seeds. Fill each one with some potting compost and plant your seeds. When they have grown into seedlings and are big enough to plant out in the ground, you can cut them up and plant the whole egg cup in the ground as it is biodegradable and means that the seedlings' delicate root system will have as little disturbance as possible. It's a good idea, too, to label all your egg boxes with the name of the seed and the date it was planted, as it's so easy to forget what was planted and when.
Liquid Refreshment
When you water your plants, it's much better for them if this is done first thing in the morning, before school, or in the evening after school, when the light is fading. Watering in full sunlight can damage the plants as water can magnify the light and cause it to scorch the leaves. Although looks can be deceiving, plants are very busy during daylight as this is when they are making all their food. It's therefore a good idea to leave them in peace and not try transplanting them at this time of day either. Always point the spout of your watering can or hosepipe at the base of the plant and water very carefully as too much water can be as damaging as too little!
Chelsea Flower Show newcomer Tiggy Salt has designed a unique child-focused courtyard garden for sponsors Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) based on the bestselling children's book, Where The Wild Things Are. CAF's mission is to inspire people to give to charity, by helping people to plan their giving tax-efficiently. You can see Tiggy's garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show which runs from 22-26 May 2007.
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