Introducing Little Ones to Gardening

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Is it time to teach your little ones how to garden? This all important life skill is something that can and should be taught early! Here are some tips on how to do it.

Introducing Little Ones to Gardening

While we were living in the rv we didn’t have much of a garden, although I did plant a few container vegetables to at least have something green growing in our space. Now we have a huge garden that is healthy and growing right out back.

Several years ago when our oldest was only 2, I thought it be a good year to start introducing our oldest to gardening. Of course, there was only so much he could do and understand right then. But I’m constantly amazed at how much he understood when we work on teaching him life skills and how much he picks up on so fast.

So today I thought I would share some of the little things I’ve done with my little ones to introduce them to the joy of gardening. I hope that you can use some of these ideas with your own family and please share your tips to introducing little ones in the comments as well!

Want to teach your children how to garden? This all-important life skill is something that can and should be taught early! Here are some tips on how to do it.

Gardening is an important life skill that all children need to learn. By doing things like having children’s sized tools and letting them pick out what to grow, you can teach your children how to garden and how to love growing things.

What Skills Do Children Learn From Gardening?

By learning to garden, children are not only learning a very valuable life skill, but they are also learning patience and healthy habits.

If we introduce children to healthy foods and the joy of growing and tending their own foods at an early age, we will help them appreciate the foods that they grow or buy and eventually eat. Now and in the future.

Children also benefit from having the physical activity that comes with gardening as well as the fresh air. Sometimes we all just need that fresh air break in the middle of the day…don’t we?

When they are older, our children may enjoy gardening as just a hobby, or they might have a huge garden and want to feed their entire family with it. No matter how they use the skill in the future, growing their own food is one of the most important things we can teach them.

Get Them Their Own Child-Sized Tools

We found some little kid-sized garden tools for my littles online here. I like this set because it’s made from real wood and metal instead of plastic.

I’ve also seen larger sets that have kid-sized shovels and rakes for sale at the local hardware store. Those would be good for before the garden is planted but we skipped them because I was a little worried about them digging up plants with them instead of just dirt.

Kids love having their own gardening tools because it makes them feel just as important as you when they are working in the garden. Having larger tools that are difficult for them to handle doesn’t make the experience a very fun one.

Let Them Feel Important When Picking

My little ones like to pick veggies and put them in my garden tubs but I also give them their own little bucket to pick with as well. This gives us the chance to pick together so I can show them the different colors and what is ready to pick and what is not. This is a great, natural way to teach preschoolers their colors!

Picking can also give you the chance to teach children about a plant’s life cycle. We can look at the plants together and try and determine where they are at in their life cycle and at which part in the life cycle we can eat them.

Wash Produce Together

When we are ready to use our produce, our littles love helping wash everything! This could be done outside if you wash your produce before you bring it in the house too, you know a mess is going to be made but it’s a great way to cool down if you are working in the garden on a hot day.

Let Them Grow Things They Love to Eat

Children will have much more fun in the garden if they are growing some of their favorite foods. Some fruits and vegetables that are always popular are:

• Cherry Tomatoes
• Strawberries
• Lettuce
• Cucumbers
• Beans
• Peppers

Flowers are usually enjoyed by children as well so you could also grow some of these together to make your garden beautiful. Some favorites are:

• Snapdragons
• Sunflowers
• Marigolds
• Anything for the bees and butterflies

Let Them Enjoy a Mid-Pick Snack

What fun would a garden be if you didn’t take a break to munch on some sugar snap peas mid-pick? Since we don’t use chemicals on our plants, it’s ok for us to have a little snack in the garden from what we are picking.

It also helps show the kids that we aren’t just doing work but this is food we can and are going to eat!

Of course, for older children, you can also talk about what meals you might make with the ripe foods in your garden. You can make the meals together later, but while you are still in the garden and working together, it’s fun to talk about all of the tasty dishes that you can create with what you are growing.

Make Crafts for the Garden Space

There are so many fun crafts that you can do together to spruce up the garden and your little one will love seeing their projects in that important place. Try things like homemade stepping stones or homemade bird feeders. You could look up instructions for making homemade wind chimes or even a simple bee waterer.

These crafts are not only good gardening projects and garden activities that the children will like to do, but they are still teaching them valuable lessons.

An example would be…we can make a bee waterer craft for the bees. In turn, more bees will visit our garden and more plants will get pollinated. Pollination is crucial for things to grow so our simple craft has now turned into an important life lesson and a life skill to learn about.

Have Them Help Create Compost

This is a very simple project that anyone can do, no matter what size garden you are tending. Have the children help you create compost to use as a fertilizer in your garden. This could be as simple as keeping a compost bucket in the kitchen or as large as creating a big compost pile outside.

Use this as an opportunity to talk about food waste and how we can repurpose things. How life comes from life. Teach them about soil health and how we grow good soil so that we can grow good food.

Set Up a Theme Garden

Something fun that you can do together besides a basic garden is to set up a themed garden. Some simple themes might be:

• Pizza Garden (Grow different toppings for pizza along with the herbs and tomatoes to make the sauce.)
• Herb Garden (Any and all herbs can go here, it’s fun to try new ones. Basil, rosemary, parsley, and cilantro are all easy to grow and have many uses.)
• Salsa Garden (Grow your favorite tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro, and anything else you might want to try in a salsa.)

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There are so many fun things that you can do together in the garden that will help your little one learn at the same time! We are having a great summer already and I know that my little ones are learning a lot over the years.

These are skills that they can use their entire life and I’m glad for the chance to get to teach them these things and teach them to love gardening and vegetables so early in life

Find all my Gardening Tips here!

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What are some ways you can introduce your little ones to gardening? How do they help you in the garden?

This article on Introducing Little Ones to Gardening was originally published on Little House Living in June 2014. It has been updated as of April 2026.

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