How gardening can help nurture happier and healthier children
Imagine for a moment: summer is fading into autumn and your child wanders up to the end of your garden, plucks some French beans from a plant, brings them in, and you cook them together. From the plant they have grown.
Spring and early summer is the perfect time to get outdoors with the little people in our lives. But, with this year's weather being so cold and wet, and with so many other, quick and easy, things to occupy their minds and attention, it can be easy not to bother.
Here's why you should.
Gardening makes them calm and happy
The link between time in nature and our mental health is getting clearer and clearer. Gardening is especially good because it provides a window into processes that take place in nature, the impact of insects and wildlife and the impact our care can have on the natural world. It puts us in touch and in acute awareness of processes and phenomena that are happening all around us.
Gardening is good for their brains
Children learn and engage with the world best using all their senses. It's how they learn. A garden is a sensory environment: it contains all the colours, textures and sensations the small child needs to form a bond with the world around them.
Gardening is good for their health
Gardening can be surprisingly good exercise - helping children burn off energy and grow their strength. Leaving the sanitised, germ-free, environment of the modern home to get up close to the earth develops our immune systems, and stimulates our interest in, (and willingness to eat,) fruit and vegetables.
Gardening is messy, awkward and takes time
Growing a seed from scratch means your child needs to remember to water and care for it, to take it outside when the weather is safe for it, and to find the right mix of sun and shade for it to grow. Growing plants and flowers alongside your child is a great lesson in nurturing, patience and care.
Gardening is much easier than you might think
The bewildering language on seed packets and on some specialist gardening sites can belie the fact that gardening is actually pretty simple to get started with. When I started Mud & Bloom, one of our aims was to help people get started without specialist knowledge or equipment. If you're not green-fingered, there are lots of books, free advice blogs and other resources out there. If you don't already know how to garden, you can learn with your child as you go! Our subscription box makes things even simpler: delivering everything you need to your door each month for brilliant seasonal growing activities without constant trips to the garden centre.
Author: Anja ffrench, Founder and Director of Mud & Bloom
If you’d like to receive regular nature craft activities like this alongside gardening activities for children, subscribe below to receive a monthly Mud & Bloom box! Each monthly Mud & Bloom box contains at least two craft activities for children as well as two growing activities.