gardening

Cultivating an Environment for Growth

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Small purple crocuses and red berries among grasses

Digging a tiny hole to transplant my peppers, I smiled as the soil crumbled in my hands. It was dark, moist soil, the result of years of adding organic matter (straw, compost, and leaves) to the heavy clay in our yard. While I care for my plants by watering and weeding them, the soil is probably the most important part of my garden’s success. There’s nothing you can do to force a plant to grow, but there are lots of ways we can create an environment that nurtures them. The same goes for people and situations as well.

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How environmental activities can help neurodivergent kids

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A children's bicycle with a blue bag on the handlebars and a five-headed stuffed dragon in the bag
My younger son’s bike, complete with a monster companion

Feet pushing confidently on his pedals, riding his bike in loops around the park, I see the stress melt away from my older son. I’ve described it as moving meditation for him. He’s an emotionally intense kid, but other forms of meditation just didn’t meet his needs. They were often too quiet or too still. Biking fulfilled that need to move, his body in sync with his mind and everything else.

I know my kid isn’t the only neurodivergent kid for whom biking helps. (For those not familiar, neurodivergent refers to any person whose brain doesn’t match the “typical” brain. It includes autistic people, people with ADHD, people with depression, anxiety, dyslexia, and more.) In fact, there are many environmentally friendly activities that can help kids (and adults) with some of the challenges that come with being neurodivergent. Even if you and your kids are neurotypical, these activities have many of the same benefits. This is actually what much of my book is about!

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The life lessons gardening is teaching my children

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Our roaming, sprawling cherry tomato plants from last summer, growing all into and over our netting-based fence with a pink plastic flamingo in the background

“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.”

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How sustainability today can help us prepare for tough times ahead

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Photo of a climate justice protest in Washington D.C. with trees, the White House, and the Washington Monument behind a gathered crowd on a rainy day

Endless hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding; astronomically high prices and low wages; biodiversity collapse – is this the future you expect for your kids in 30 years? For many of us concerned about climate change and social inequality, it seems like the future is going to be pretty grim. Some people are even going so far to think we’re going to be living in something out of a dystopia SF novel (if we’re not already).

But while being prepared for a legit natural or human-caused disaster is a good thing, hunkering down in despair isn’t. Honestly, our children deserve for us to at least try to turn this ship in the right direction. No one wants to tell their kids, “We didn’t bother trying because what was the point?”

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When Gardens Teach Your Kids About Failure

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Text: When Gardens Teach Your Kids About Failure; Photo: White woman frowning standing next to a straggly garden
Our garden this year is a testament to my kids that even when you work really hard, you don’t always get what you want.
My cherry tomatoes are usually the pride and joy of my garden. They’re a ridiculous, messy, borderline “haunted garden” disaster area that gives the weeds a run for their money; they also produce a zillion amazing tomatoes. My late, beloved neighbor once told me that she had a bet with our other neighbor that I wouldn’t be able to grow tomatoes – and then was proud of me when she lost her bet. I’m that person who brings in cherry tomatoes to work because we can’t possibly eat all of them. My older son is constantly raiding the garden.
But not this year. And not just because I’m working from home. But because we have stumps sitting in our garden that have produced exactly zero tomatoes so far. At this point, we’ll be extremely lucky if we get any tomatoes at all this year.

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How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids (Photo: Bowls of sunflower seeds on a counter)

Two huge sunflowers rose out of my children’s garden, their once yellow faces bending down towards the Earth. Holding a serrated knife, I wondered how on Earth I was going to get their seeds out. But I had promised my kids sunflower seeds and sunflower seeds were what I was going to deliver.

Despite my conundrum, saving and using seeds from your garden (or even farmer’s market purchased produce), isn’t that complicated. It’s a great activity to do with kids that you can use to illustrate the life cycle of plants and teach them how to use as much of the plant as possible. It also minimizes reliance on store bought seeds for your garden. After you’ve harvested the seeds, you can save them for next year’s garden, feed them to wildlife, or even cook them off and eat them yourself.

If you’re interested in saving seeds, here are the main steps:

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The Life Lessons I Want My Kids to Gain from Gardening

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The Life Lessons I Want My Kids to Gain from Gardening (Photo: Two young white children standing in front of giant sunflowers)

“Don’t walk – just stay there,” I told my two-year-old as he maneuvered around the wheelbarrow in our garden. Squish! His foot came right down on a squash vine. Oh well – there’s plenty more where that came from.

Even though my kids aren’t always gentle when it comes to my plants, they bring joy to my gardening. I think it benefits them too. Besides the health benefits, there’s a bunch of valuable life lessons I hope they pick up from our adventures in growing food.

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How to Garden Round the Seasons

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How to Garden Round the Seasons (Photo: Small child playing in the dirt surrounded by tomato plants)

My beans have wilted, either from the slugs slurping on them or the sun beating down on them. Random holes in my garden are a testament to the birds digging for worms. The squash leaves are full of nibbles. Every year around late spring, I begin to despair about my garden.

Yet every late summer and fall, we have produce fresh from the backyard. (Sometimes bountiful, sometimes less so.) At the end of every year, I find growing my garden worthwhile. It brings our food miles down to zero, ensures my food is totally organic, stores carbon in the soil, creates habitat for animals, and is a wonderful way to bond with my kids.

But how do we go from those spring days to the (semi)-successful harvests? The whole process starts in the winter.

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How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Thinking about starting seeds for your family vegetable garden? Here’s step-by-step instructions on starting seeds and getting your kids involved.

How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids (Two photos, both of small white children leaning over bowls of dirt with their hands in it)

Watching my kids plunge their hands into a mix of seed starting mix and water on our back deck, I know there’s something simply right about what we’re doing. And messy. Very messy.

But after planning a garden with kids, seed starting is the next logical step. While I could fill my backyard garden with seedlings from the farmers’ market, starting everything from seed is both cheaper and more rewarding. It helps the kids see the full life-cycle of plants, from seed to fruit and back to seed again. It’s also a great way to get them involved before spring shows up.

So every year, I flip through the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, order too much, and start the process of bringing up seedlings. (If you’re not in the Southeast U.S., Home for the Harvest has a great list of sustainable vegetable seed companies.) While my older son (nicknamed Sprout, appropriately) has helped start seeds the last few years, my younger son started helping this year too.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

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How to Plan a Vegetable Garden with Your Kids

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Planting vegetables in your and your kids’ garden is a great way to build a connection with their food source. But to get the most out of it, planning is key! Here’s how to effectively plan a family vegetable garden. 

How to Plan Growing Vegetables in Your Kids Garden (Photo: White woman and white boy reading a book labeled Week By Week Vegetable Garden)

The bright illustrations of the seed catalog beckoned us, reminding us of spring among the dreary February slush. The cover featured gnomes frolicking among eggplants and tomatoes. With my older son sitting next to me, I opened it up, my eyes scanning the options.

“What do you want to plant?” I ask him. His mouth twists in thought. “Tomatoes. I want to plant tomatoes.”

“We’ll definitely plant tomatoes,” I say, nodding.

It was garden-planning time once again. Each year, as we find ourselves sick of Washington D.C.’s endless freezing rain, this season comes along to greet us with hope.

Perhaps it’s my background in understanding the connections between things in nature, perhaps it’s my focus on sustainability and minimizing interference after the fact, or maybe it’s just my love of to-do lists, but planning is the most important step of gardening for me. Even though the garden itself often ends up a bit of a mess, I always start with a solid plan.

Planning has become even more important with kids. Thankfully, getting kids involved in planning from the beginning is a great way to introduce them to gardening.

Here’s how we plan our kids garden:

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