“Can you water your garlic?” I asked my younger son, referring to the elephant garlic we planted in our garden. He loves elephants, so of course we had to plant an elephant plant.

“Sure!” he replied.

Now, did he actually water it? Well, no. He tried, but the rain barrel was out of water and then he got distracted.

Thankfully, the garden isn’t school and watering is not homework. But there is much my kids will learn from it, above and beyond the practical skills that go into planting and cultivating seeds. These lessons are drawn from my own experience, but also heavily influenced from broader points I’ve picked up from the books Braiding Sweetgrass and Lessons from Plants. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says in Braiding Sweetgrass, “Plants speak in a tongue that every breathing thing can understand. Plants teach in a universal language: food.”

Demonstrate mutual respect and reciprocity to nature

So much of environmentalism is focused on what we can do to avoid harming our living and non-living neighbors on this planet. There’s a heavy implication that anything we do will have a negative impact, so we should just avoid doing things as much as possible. But that attitude just separates us from nature more. It makes it seem like we’re apart rather than part of nature itself. Plus, avoiding doing harm is no way to have a relationship! In contrast, gardening is one way we can develop and reinforce an everyday, healthy, relationship with nature. We give our time, effort, and love and receive nourishing food back. It requires us spend time with it – even when we might not want to – and a level of commitment and responsibility.

The nature in your backyard matters too, not just “wilderness”

Most of us will spend the majority of our time in nature in ordinary places, whether those are our backyards or suburban parks or nearby hiking trails. Even if we get to National Parks or somewhere similar, it’s once or twice a year at best. (National Parks were never really “wilderness” without people anyway – all ecosystems have been influenced by people for millennia, even if European colonists didn’t acknowledge it.) Instead, we can find beauty and joy in the natural, non-human beings and systems that surround us. If you think about it, trees are a wonder, from their roots that communicate with microbes to their leaves that capture the sunshine. Gardens offer us a little peek into this other world, in a way that we can interact and experiment with. Waiting and watching seeds sprout and grow evokes childlike wonder in all of us.

Nothing needs to be truly wasted

“Nothing is wasted in nature” has become a bit of a mantra for me. Rest? Necessary, as we can see through the restful winter season in the garden. Food waste? Not wasted if you compost it into good soil and give it back to the garden. Rain? Collected in the rain barrel and funneled back. Weeds? We pick dandelions and feed them to the rabbit or even make them into dandelion jam.

Everything has a role, even if sometimes it’s in the wrong place

There’s a saying that “weeds are just wildflowers in the wrong place.” Which is sort of true, but sort of understates how amazing most weeds are. Weeds are often pioneer plants. They’re often the first ones to move into an area after a disaster, like a wildfire or a flood that has stripped away the topsoil. They start breaking down the hard pack or burrowing through cracks on stone, starting the path for other plants to establish themselves. They have a very important, essential role in nature – even if it’s one we might not want in our garden. Understanding the role weeds play helps us both understand ecology and save us time and energy.

“Problems” are often unmet needs

If weeds show up en masse or we have major issues with pests, we know there’s probably an unmet need in the system. Maybe we need to improve the soil, water more often, or mulch more. In life, understanding this idea also helps us meet unmet needs. If a kid is being destructive, maybe they need to work with their hands to rip up something or run around to get out energy. (Ripping up newspaper for composting is perfect for fulfilling this urge!)

Collaborating instead of competing makes everyone better

We try to practice cooperative planting in our garden, so our plants can complement each other rather than compete for resources. One of the best known examples of cooperative planting is the Three Sisters planting of corn, beans, and squash. Some people specify that the Muskogee Native American tribe developed this partnership of plants, but it seems like it was common across many Indigenous North American tribes. The beans draw nitrogen from the air to improve the soil, the corn grows upward and provides the beans stalks to grow around, and the squash covers the ground and keeps weeds from growing. While we don’t have room for Three Sisters in our garden (both corn and squash takes up a lot of space even combined together), we try to ensure that our plants don’t compete for space and resources. I don’t plant broccoli and tomatoes near each other because they take up a lot of space above the ground. I don’t plant garlic and potatoes near other because they compete for space below ground. We try to plant beans near plants that are resource-greedy because they add nitrogen to the soil. This attitude even extends beyond individual plants to nature in general – working with the rules of nature instead of against them. Thinking about collaboration first and foremost is an essential life skill.

Play to your strengths

We grow vegetables and fruits that we know grow well and that we want, rather than trying to trying to force ourselves to grow things we know are likely to fail. Instead of big tomatoes that crack and get moldy in the hot and humid D.C. weather, we grow cherry tomatoes. As much as Swiss chard grows very well, I don’t like cooking with it and don’t have the energy to try a whole bunch of recipes in an effort to make myself like it. Sometimes in life, you just have to embrace your strengths rather than focusing on things that take more resources than you have at the moment.

Gardening also builds patience (waiting for things to sprout!), responsibility (not watering leads to obvious natural consequences), and empowerment around their food. But I love how the act of gardening really does teach us even broader life lessons than concrete skills. Robin Wall Kimmerer and Beronda L. Montgomery (Lessons from Plants) are right – there’s so much we and our kids can learn from plants.