Live Healthy Live Well

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.”

 – Elizabeth Lawrence

Searching for more quality time with family and children?  Might they be your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or students?   Want to “unplug” and become more physically active?  Are you looking to practice better health habits and eating?  Well, you can “plant these seeds” and teach children life skills, values, family history, health and other things as “more than a seed is planted in a garden.”

The benefits of gardening with children include:

• Increasing responsibility, independence, leadership, empathy, teamwork, and problem solving as they plan, plant, and grow their garden.
• Creating an awareness of where food comes from as they participate in the processes of growing, transporting, storing, and preparing foods.
• Developing an understanding and appreciation of nature by interacting with soil, seeds, leaves, stems, plants, water, sun, pollinators, animals, and insects.
• Strengthening bones and muscles by working in the garden.
• Creating real-life experiences and connections between gardening, health, cooking, food preservation, local foods, grocery stores, farmers markets, and community kitchens.
• Reducing stress by appreciating the “colors,” “air,” and “morning.”

School programs can benefit from gardening with youth as well. In fact, research and studies about School Gardens show the following:

• Education acquired in the garden can increase students’ overall academic performance and learn more effectively..
• Students who engage in school gardens show significant gains in overall grade point average, specifically in math and science.
• Teachers believe that implementing new learning styles can help students
• Students expand their ways of thinking or habits of mind to include curiosity, flexibility, open-mindedness, informed skepticism, creativity, and critical thinking.

You can create a “learning laboratory” by gardening with children, which will teach them about themselves, their families, communities, and life.

Some final thoughts:

“You have the chance to plant a seed of something very special in the hearts, minds, and spirits of your children as you garden together.”  – Cathy James

“Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.”  – Robert Brault

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”  – Audrey Hepburn

Adapted by:  Janet Wasko Myers, Program Assistant, Horticulture, Ohio State University Extension, Clark County, myers.31@osu.edu

Reviewed by:  Kathy Green, Extension Educator, Family and Consumer Sciences, Ohio State University Extension, Clark County, green.1405@osu.edu

Sources:

University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.  Gardening with Children, Every Child Belongs in a Garden.
https://ceinfo.unh.edu/Community-Gardens/Gardening-Children

Colorado State University Extension.  Department of Human Development & Family Studies.  Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Gardening with Children.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/grg/feature/gardening.html

University of Illinois Extension.  The Great Plant Escape
urbanext.illinois.edu/gpe/links/index.html

Rutgers Cooperative Extension.  Learning Through the Garden.
https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs1211/