Make Gardening a Family Affair - Part 1: Why Gardening Is Good for the Whole Family!

Gardening offers so many benefits for those who make it a part of their lives! It can put some extra food on the table, offer nutritious foods for your family’s good health, and it can be a fun hobby, too. However, not only can it be a great activity for one person, but it can also be a bonding experience for the whole family to do together.

When you involve your loved ones in gardening, it also lightens the workload of one person having to prepare and care for a garden, and it will give your family time to support each other, offer praise, and share excitement – all in a peaceful setting without the intrusion of electronics.

It’s easy to get your whole family involved in creating and maintaining a sustainable garden. Your spouse and children can help take care of the garden as a whole - with everyone working side by side, or you can split up portions of the garden into different sections and rotate it among family members so that each person spends time helping another person in your family.

Why Gardening Is Good for the Family

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gardening isn’t just a good hobby. You can learn a lot of different things through gardening, including self-sufficiency. When you involve your family in the process of growing their own fruits and vegetables, you’ll be helping them learn many useful things that can benefit them now as well as later on in life.

When your family gardens, everyone will have to learn which fruits and vegetables are best grown in the spring and summer, and which ones are best grown in the fall. You can give everyone a lesson on planting zones and how to choose which produce grows best in your area.

You will also learn how weather can affect plants, how water and sunshine help the plant to grow, and what bugs are attracted to certain plants. These facts will interest teens as well as younger kids.

You can learn more than just the facts and benefits of plants for food. When you garden with your family, you can learn other uses for a plant. For instance, some of them have been used throughout human history to treat certain health issues.

Teach them that the basil they’re growing can possibly help treat headaches. Let them know that the lavender they see sprouting up is something that can help calm and soothe them after a stressful day, even helping them sleep better at night!

As you work with your family to plant and care for a garden, let them learn which fruits and vegetables work best with certain dishes and which ones they like most. You don’t want to plant something no one likes and that you’ll never eat!

Gardening is also a great way to explore and learn brand new foods to try. If you’re first starting out, use fruits and vegetables that are easy to grow, such as beets, carrots, cucumbers, snap peas, and blackberries.

Once you’ve been gardening for awhile, don’t be afraid to experiment with different fruits and vegetables. Mix up your garden to create some color and variety. Have fun letting others in your family choose what to plant in the garden! Teens and younger kids will especially enjoy having this choice.

Another benefit of gardening is getting to watch your kids become self-confident when they learn to grow a vegetable or fruit on their own.

You’ll also get to see your child become more responsible as they take care to water the plants and pull weeds to help the garden grow.

Let your family members each be responsible for their own fruits and vegetables. Allow them to learn and to research the care that different types of plants need.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gardening can also help open up communication. If you have older kids and teenagers, many parents find it hard to communicate with them. But if you can have them help you in the garden, it creates time you can spend with them one on one – without friends texting them or the TV blaring in the background. Sometimes, all it takes is doing an activity together to help strengthen family bonds!

Not only does gardening help with communication, but it also opens your family up to having something they all share. It helps bring the family together and adds closeness.

This works the same with your spouse.

If you both work, time with each other can be limited. But having something that you both take care of together can offer a time for communication as well as a fun hobby.

Just keep in mind that different family members will enjoy certain tasks more than others. While you might enjoy pulling weeds, another family member might not be so thrilled with it. Make sure to split up the tasks so no one gets stuck doing something he or she hates.

As you can see, gardening together as a family has many benefits for everyone, and can help bring your family closer together doing something productive that you all can enjoy!

Be sure to check back next week for some more helpful tips on getting your kids involved in the garden....