Five Ways to Get Your Children Interested in Gardening

With the summer holidays almost upon us, now is the ideal time to get children interested in gardening. Madingley Mulch stock a lot of child-friendly gardening items, including play bark and play pit sand, for customers in Essex, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and our home county of Cambridgeshire. Here are our top tips for fostering your child – or grandchild’s – interest in nature.

 

Help them Grow Their Own Flowers

Children will get plenty of satisfaction from ‘growing their own’ plants. You can start them off with something easy like sunflowers, marigolds and poppies that have the added benefit of colourful displays. At the same time, sensory plants like rattling poppy seedheads, smelly curry plant and chocolate cosmos will engage all their senses.

 

Let Them Go Potty

If space is at a premium or you haven’t got enough room to give them a dedicated patch in your garden, potted plants are a good solution. Ivy, clematis, busy lizzies and other trailing plants will all be a colourful addition to your garden. Children will also have lots of fun painting plant pots in bright colours or designs of their own choosing.

 

Help them Grown Their Own Vegetables

Children will enjoy growing their own even more if they get to eat the fruits of their labours. And creating a small vegetable patch they can call their own will be good for their diet as well. Radishes, lettuces, runner beans and courgettes are all easy to grow. For something a bit different, you can try Swiss chard, which is similar to spinach.

 

Create their Own Wildlife-Friendly Garden

If space permits, let them have their own space in the garden. Give it clearly defined boundaries or fences so that they can truly call it their own. We specialise in fence supplies from our shop on the edge of Cambridge; this includes high-quality panels and posts.

Lavender, abelia, honeysuckle, ivy, lungwort, crocus, snowdrops and wild herbs like rosemary, chives and sage are all excellent for bees, which helps the eco-system. To create areas where other insects will thrive, you can buy special bug hotels. Alternatively, a pile of old logs, leaves and twigs may do just as well. Children will have fun spotting all the different species. 

For later in the year, boxes and feeding tables will encourage birds into the garden and give them a valuable food source over the winter months when their natural sources are in short supply.

 

Adding Sandpits and Swings

Above all, children are still children, so they will still like to enjoy themselves. If you are thinking of creating sandpits or putting up swings, make sure there is no scope for injuries, and you can see them clearly from the house.

Our play bark, which we can supply to customers in Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Herts, has softer edges than other forms, so if your child falls on it from any sort of height (such as from a swing) they shouldn’t hurt themselves. It can also be used as a weed-suppressing mulch in other parts of the garden. We also stock play pit sand which is stone-free, reducing the chance of cuts and grazes.

 

Outdoor Gardening Supplies from Madingley Mulch

For our full range of gardening supplies, follow this link to our online shop.

Madingley Mulch offer free delivery to anywhere within a 15-mile radius of our base on the edge of Cambridge. For addresses within 24.5 miles, a £20 delivery charge applies. We can deliver further afield as well. We have a regular weekly delivery service which goes to Ely, Saffron Walden, Huntingdon, Newmarket and many other towns and villages in the area. At the moment, delivery is between 2-7 working days from the time of your order. 

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