Gardening!
Looking to flex your green thumb? Or maybe you've always wondered what to do with used coffee grounds (no?). This guide's got you covered!
“Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.”
—Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden.
Gardens are magical places! Tiny seeds turn into sprawling vines full of jewel-colored tomatoes. Papery brown bulbs sprout into a cheerful yellow daffodils. A potato cut into pieces turns into more potatoes under ground! Maybe most surprising of all is compost: eggshells and apple peels and dryer lint transform into rich soil to feed all of those incredible botanical beings. Whether or not you have a green thumb, this guide is full of books and ideas to help you enjoy some of the magic that gardens have to offer.
What you’ll find in the Gardening Guide:
Gardening Books to Read Together
Snack Time: Savory Dirt Cups
Invitation to Play: Beans in a Bag
Invitation to Play: Sensory Gardening Bin
And lots more, too! Download the guide for all the Gardening songs, poems, books, ideas, and activities.
Guides are available to all subscribers for 1 month after they come out, and then they’ll go into the archive which is available to paid subscribers.
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12 Gardening books to read with your kids.
Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby
And the Good Brown Earth by Kathy Henderson
My Garden by Kevin Henkes
Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip by Denia Hester, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson
One Little Lot: The 1-2-3s of an Urban Garden by Diane C. Mullen, illustrated by Oriol Vidal
Goodnight, Veggies by Diana Murray, illustrated by Zachariah O’Hora
Gwendolyn’s Pet Garden by Anne Renaud, illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh
Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals, illustrated by Ashley Wolff
Tops & Bottoms by Janet Stevens
To Be Like the Sun by Susan Marie Swanson, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine
I’ve linked to Amazon for the sake of convenience, but go through Bookshop.org if you want to support independent booksellers, or buy used copies from AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, and eBay. And of course nothing beats your local public library.
If you’re really excited about gardening with kids, two books to check out are Let’s Get Gardening from DK and Roots, Shoots, Buckets, & Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. If you’re raising little foodies, Fanny at Chez Panisse: A Child’s Restaurant Adventures by Alice Waters is a charming cookbook-slash-picture book with lots of moments in the garden.
🌱🌱🌱
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A gardening poem.
“Little Seeds” by Else Holmelund Minarik Little seeds we sow in spring, growing while the robins sing, give us carrots, peas and beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash and greens. And we pick them, one and all, through the summer, through the fall. Winter comes, then spring, and then little seeds we sow again.
Interesting things for grown-ups.
To spark your own grown-up wonder about gardens and gardening, here are some fun and fascinating things I came across as I researched and created this guide.
➵ An open letter to my dead grandmother… (McSweeney’s) “An open letter to my dead grandmother, who last June started to build a bird sanctuary in the front yard, but who then, last July, died, leaving us a dry, patchy, landing strip of horticultural nonsense, and a dream”
➵ Guerrilla Gardener in South Central LA (TED Radio Hour) “Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in... abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food...”
➵ It’s truly amazing what’s grown out of Larry Zacharko’s backyard (Toronto Star) “The backyard behind Larry Zacharko’s row house doesn’t look like much. At this time of year, it’s just dirt with some scattered gardening implements on it, wedged between a parking lot on the lane and the narrow house. Not much dirt, at that, a small patch of land approximately eight feet by 15 feet. Doesn’t look like much. But, oh, the things that grow out of it.”
“What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden (The Bean-Field)
➵ Seeds, the Gateway Drug to Gardening (New Yorker) “Like the best vices, those cheap little seed packets offer excitement, gratification, and, crucially, a desire for more.”
“My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first [compost] heap.” —Bette Midler, Los Angeles Times, May 1996
I hope you loved the Gardening guide! If you enjoyed this theme, be sure to check out the On the Farm guide, too. And for more Discovery & Play Guides, click this green button here to find the full archive.
Kiss and hug, ladybug!
Love, Kathryn