Top tips for getting kids into gardening

1) Encourage hands-on learning

To inspire children, we have to give them something hands-on to do. At the Children’s Mini Festival on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 July we’re making bug hotels, sowing seeds and designing gardens with play bricks. And the fun is for the whole family, not just for the kids. I want to start conversations between parents and children that will carry on once everyone’s back home – gardening with kids is all about families connecting and creating memories.

Lee Connelly, aka Skinny Jean Gardener, enjoys inspiring little green fingers to garden

2) Let them grow plants

I thought potatoes grew on trees until I was 24. When we were growing up, my brother and I weren’t allowed to touch anything growing in the garden, and gardening was never something we did together as a family. That missing part of my childhood is why I’m so passionate about getting kids to garden now; I don’t want other children to miss out, and I don’t want parents to miss out either.

RHS Campaign for School Gardening

3) Head outside together

I started gardening with my daughter Olive when she was three months old. I put some seeds in her hand and she sprinkled them on the soil – not that she remembers it, but I always remind her, even now that she’s 10. At primary school age and below, your kids want your attention more than anything else, and they feel good by being together with you – so take that time out into the garden.

4) Take a break from the screen

Leave your phone inside so you don’t feel the urge to take a selfie. The only way to get our children to put their screens down is for us parents to do it too. When Olive was younger, she’d always be in my social media videos, but I realised that was affecting our time together – removing the phone reignited the bond of being outside together.

5) Use sensory play

Children are curious and can feel the wonder of nature – but we need to relax our ‘look but don’t touch’ attitude if we’re not to squash that. Plant lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina) so your kids can stroke the leaves; get a pot of chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus) so they can smell it; fill a tub with soil and water and let them make a bit of a mess.

6) Allow them to decide

Allow kids to make their own decisions. Last year, Olive and I each made a garden in a pot. We went to the garden centre and bought the plants we wanted with our £10 budget (and had a chocolate bun, obviously). It was so, so hard to let Olive just pick the plants she liked. But she still plays with her fairy pot, and she loves it because she has full ownership of it.

Wellbeing benefits of gardening for children

Look out for Lee’s moniker at RHS Hampton Court Palace Festival

7) Grow something kids like to eat

Get children interested in gardening

Radishes are the last thing you should grow. No child I know likes eating radishes and, while they’re quick, they’re not exciting. Grow something that your kid cares about, something they like to eat. It will take time and your child will need patience and to take on the responsibility of looking after the plant – but if they care, they will. We live in a world where everything is instant, and a garden is not that. It’s an opportunity to help our kids learn about patience, to think about something for longer than a nanosecond, and find some calm.

Gardening for all

I feel like a magician when I go into schools to garden. Everyone is so excited: maybe because they’re getting time out of doing maths, but mostly because they want to be outside. Schools are doing more gardening than they have ever done, but kids are crying out for more. I’m hopeful that gardening will become part of the primary school curriculum within the next 10 years, because we need to sow those seeds. It feels like gardening has skipped a generation and parents these days are so busy that gardens are all about what’s easiest and what’s quickest. If children’s idea of gardening is to cover everything in concrete or plastic, then we’re all in trouble.