10 Tips To Get Children Involved In The Garden

Fun In The Garden
Fun In The Garden
We are frequently asked “How can I get my kids interested in gardening?”.  And these days with easy access to a range of electronic entertainment devices, it is more important than ever to encourage children to create their own garden and grow their own food.  Here are our top ten tips to encourage your kids into the garden.     Continue reading

Mini Blogger – Composting by Sophia aged 11

Sophia and compost bin
Sophia Mixing Her Compost
Why compost?
Composting is a great way to reduce waste and feed your garden. By composting your fruit and vegetable scraps you are not only doing a good deed for nature but you are helping reduce pollution; for example when you throw your fruit and veggie scraps in the normal rubbish bin it rots and produces toxic gasses. When you compost you avoid this.
By composting you are also creating a cycle: first you eat the fruit and/or vegetables and then throw the scraps in your compost bucket, when your compost bucket gets full you take the bucket out to your big compost bin and over time the scraps will break down so that you can use it on your veggie garden. This is excellent soil for your new vegetables to grow healthy and also saves you money because you don’t have to buy soil. Once it has all broken down you can use it on your garden, then when your fruits and veggies are ready to pick the cycle restarts. Continue reading

Gardening Activities Around Australia These School Holidays

girls at cranbourne bot gardens
Kid Friendly Activities at the Cranbourne Botanic Gardens
With the school holidays upon us in most parts of the country, it is a great time to visit your local Botanic Garden. Many Botanic Gardens around Australia have free or low cost activities designed for kids.  Links to some of the kid friendly activities happening at our Botanic Gardens during the September 2014 school holidays are listed below.
Sydney – A range of activities for children aged between 3 and 12, held at the Sydney, Mount Annan and Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens.
Melbourne – Craft, nature and gardening activities for kids held at the Melbourne and Cranbourne Botanic Gardens.
Brisbane – Story time for toddlers and free school kids activities at the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens. Continue reading

Canterbury Public School Students Get Their Hands Dirty

Students taking part in the Nature's Recyclers worm farm workshop
Students at Canterbury Public School in NSW have formed a gardening club as part of a composting project funded by a Coles Junior Landcare Garden Grant.
The Canterbury Green Thumbs Gardening Club includes both students and parents, and gives students who are interested in gardening the opportunity to work in the garden out of school hours. Continue reading

The Best Trees for Kids

National Tree Day 2012I love trees! I always have and always will. I really enjoy teaching children how respect and enjoy trees.  When it comes to picking my absolute favourite tree for kids I find it incredibly tricky as there are so many! So, I decided to ask some of Australia’s leading tree lovers and fellow kids gardening enthusiasts what their favourite tree is for children and why. As you will see, even some of them had trouble come up with just one.
Prunus Snow Fountains in leaf
Understandably, Wes Fleming from Fleming’s Nurseries and award winner at 2013 Chelsea Flower Show, could not pick just one tree. Continue reading

The Green Sustainability Project at Hillarys Early Childhood Learning Centre

Hillarys Early Learning Centre garden
The children enjoyed planting and caring for their vegetables.
Every year since 2008 Coles and Junior Landcare have been providing grants to schools and youth groups to create gardens in their grounds or community.  The Hillarys Early Childhood Learning Centre, in Hillarys, Western Australia, received a $1100 grant in 2012 to develop an interactive sensory garden that involved not only the school and parent community but also members of the wider, local community. This is their story:
The Green Sustainability Project at Hillarys Early Childhood Learning Centre is a community project involving the staff from the school, the parent community and wider community (grandparents and interested members of the local community) which turned a very lifeless patch of unused ground attached to the Early Years Learning Centre into an interactive Sensory Garden. Continue reading

Celebrate World Environment Day on June 5th

Celebrate World Environment DayWednesday, June 5th is World Environment Day (WED) and this year the theme is Think.Eat.Save. There is no doubt that global food production is placing an enormous strain on our natural resources however WED is the perfect opportunity to talk to your kids about food miles, food wastage and reducing their ecological footprint whilst celebrating our wonderful world. Here are ten activities you can do with your kids to celebrate World Environment Day and help reduce their footprint: Continue reading

Guest Post: How to Create a Rubbish Garden

Chloe Marchbank is enjoys teaching her children about the environment and recycling.
Today’s guest post is written by Chloe Marchbank, a freelance writer and mum to three daughters. Chloe is passionate about teaching her daughters about the importance of caring for the environment and religiously recycles whatever and whenever she can.
Now, I know that on reading the title of this article, you’re probably thinking, “Why on earth would I want to make my garden look rubbish? Surely, I’m after tips on how to make it look nicer?” Well, before I go on any further, let me explain myself – because, when I use the term ‘rubbish’, I am in fact referring to using old household items to make your garden not only look nicer, but to also make it more eco-friendly – with the help of your children!
Your children are bound to love getting involved with helping you make these creations for your garden, and what’s more, it’ll also teach them the importance of recycling old items to help and do something positive for the environment around them. Continue reading

Guest Post: Six Tips for Kid-friendly, Chemical-free Vegetable Gardening

Alessandra Winfield
Alessandra Winfield enjoys spending time out in the garden with her kids and shares her tips
Today’s guest post is written by Alessandra Winfield – a Dietitian, homeschool mum of 2 boys and writer of the blog Practical Skills for Kids. She has been gardening since she was a little girl, learning from her grandmother. She just loves teaching kids all sorts of skills like gardening and cooking. 
As a Dietitian I am seeing a lot of children and adults with food sensitivities. Unlike an allergy, food sensitivities can be subtle and symptoms only appear when the person has eaten over their threshold on certain types of food. While there is much more research needed in this area, there have been suggestions that chemicals in farming may have contributed to these sensitivities.
One of the best skills we can teach our children is how to grow food without the use of chemicals, also known as organic gardening. Here are my top six tips to deter the damaging pests and diseases in your garden: Continue reading

Guest Post: Sharing Our Values with Children

Teaching kids about sustainability
Leah Wheatley writes about sharing our values with our children
Today’s post is written by Leah Wheatley – environmental scientist, mum and writer of the blog Along The Way. She enjoys writing about sustainability, parenting and wellbeing, and is passionate about practising what she preaches:
Being an environmental scientist, it has been very important to me to ensure that my daughter has an appreciation for the amazing natural world around her and the fragility of it. It has actually been quite simple and she has needed little encouragement so far to embrace my sustainability values. Here are my top tips to ensure sustainability values are passed on to the next generation: Continue reading