Kids love dirt and anything that awakens their senses. Giving them the opportunity to fill a garden space with their own plants is a great way to get them outside and teach them about plants and nature. And there’s no better opportunity to do so than now during the Easter holidays.
Here’s some quick and easy plant ideas to grow with your children:
Sunflowers
These are super easy to grow and a great plant for beginners. Your kids will love watching these grow taller than themselves. If you really want to impress your kids, plant the Sunflower ‘Mongolian Giant’ as these can grow up to 14 feet tall!
Top tip: To help your sunflowers grow tall, provide the stems with support and you’ll have the tallest sunflowers around.
Sweet Peas
A traditional English Cottage flower that’s perfect for attracting bees and other pollinators to your garden. The large seeds of the sweet peas make it easy to handle but if you’d prefer to not sow them yourself, then you can just buy them as a plug plant.
Top tip: cover your sweet peas with a small cloche or propagator as mice love sweet pea seeds.
Nasturtium
A very easy plant to grow, simply sprinkle the seeds into prepared soil, water, weed and watch as the beautiful colours develop If you’re growing vegetables in your garden, these are a great natural pest control too.
Top tip: Try some of the edible peppery flowers. Really delicious in salads and can be used as an attractive garnish in other dishes too.
Marigolds
Another edible flower, these are a great choice if your children want to see results quickly. As the seeds grow fast, you’ll soon see the colourful flowers. They are also a natural pest control in gardens and another great plant to attract bees, so a great benefit that will help other flowers bloom.
Top tip: To repel blackfly and greenfly, sow some French marigolds among tomato plants.
Wallflowers
A great plant if you really want to add a splash of colour to the garden. They’re lightly scented and look amazing. Don’t worry about the quality of your soil for these ones as they also survive in poor soil.
Top tip: Regularly deadheading encourages more flowers on the growing Wallflower, resulting in healthier plants and continued bloom.
Herb Grow Kits
We’re proud to offer our popular grow your own kits and these are a great way to grow herbs with your children. Our grow kits are a great way to introduce your children to herbs as each kit contains a variety of herbs. Don’t worry if you’re new to herbs too as our grow kits also contain expert growing instructions and everything you need to grow your herbs. If you’re in need of some cooking inspiration, you’ll also find a recipe book with your grow kit so you can get your children involved in cooking the herbs they have grown and teaching them some cooking skills too. The grow kits we currently sell are:
Grow your own herb kit *Must have cooking herbs*
Kit contains 6 popular herb seeds: coriander, common thyme, curled parsley, oregano, sage and mint
Grow your own herb kit *French cuisine cooking herbs*
Kit contains 6 popular French seeds: French parsley, lemon thyme, dill, sage, chives and common thyme
Grow your own herb kit *Roast dinner cooking herbs*
Kit contains 6 popular roast dinner seeds: French parsley, chives, mint, dill, sage, common thyme
We also sell a grow kit for herbal tea lovers, maybe not one for kids to enjoy drinking but they’ll still love to get involved growing them.
Kit contains 5 handpicked herb starter plants: lemon verbena, Moroccan mint, pineapple sage, chamomile and peppermint
Things to remember
- Make sure your garden is a safe place with suitable equipment, tools and paths for children to use
- There’s a wide variety of skills children can learn from gardening which will allow them to get involved in interesting activities, such as planting, weeding and cooking
- Gardening is a healthy and fun activity for children that encourages them to be outside
