Gardening With Kids: Slow, Messy, and Totally Worth It
Last year during this time, we were just getting settled into our home. I was pregnant with my second daughter and the move and pregnancy both had an impact on my very small and unplanned garden.
I had 5 raised beds and a few smaller container plants outside my house, and a lot of my veggies grew great, but became overgrown and untended as the summer came to an end.
This year, however, I am planning a large garden with veggies and flowers that I have thought long and hard about, ordered early and will be starting a majority of them from seeds.
I spent a lot of my post-maternity time researching plants, the best seed books, varieties and many lessons from Marth on what to do and what not to do.
Growing up I remember my grandma having an amazing garden and it was a tradition to stand out in the corn and take your picture during the Summer. “Knee high by the 4th of July” she would say.
While we are not big corn eaters in our household, I am still going to grow the obligatory plant as I can’t imagine not doing this tradition with my kids.
I fully expect there to be a decent amount of garden chaos come this spring and summer, along with a few dirty hands and feet, and a few dead or neglected rows of veggies, but gardening with kids is meant to be slow and messy.
And that’s okay. The beauty of gardening with children isn’t in perfectly straight rows or a flawless harvest; it’s in the lessons learned along the way. It’s in the joy of little hands playing in the dirt, laughing over mud-streaked knees, and the quiet moments of wonder when a seed finally sprouts.
Gardening with kids teaches patience.
It teaches observation.
And it reminds us that growth doesn’t happen on our schedule.
Sometimes a plant will bloom a week early, sometimes a row will fail entirely, but in both moments, there’s a lesson. Through gardening our kids can learn that mistakes are part of life, and we learn to slow down and enjoy the process instead of rushing toward the outcome.
This garden will be messy.
It will be loud, and it will be full of discoveries and disappointments.
But it will also be full of memories; memories of little hands helping to plant seeds, of stories shared over watering cans, of pride in a harvest no matter how small.
And in the end, that’s what makes it worth it.
Because in gardening AND motherhood, it’s not about perfection, it’s about presence. Being outside together, tending to life, and watching it grow, season by season, with our children.
So this spring, I’m ready to dig in again, embrace the chaos, and let my garden, and my kids, teach me what it truly means to grow slowly, messily, and beautifully.
