How do you manage to garden with a baby/toddler?

[MadamePlatypus]

Just interested in other people's experiences. When DS was really little I would put him in his buggy while I was gardening - the only problem was that I would be up to my elbows in mud when he would need attention. As he has grown older (now almost 3) we have had lots of fun planting things. The problem is that for every plant planted, there is an equivalent amount of compost distributed on grass/around pot, and he does like to unplant things and replant them. He is great at watering - his feet - and is definitely of the create a mud bath school of container cultivation. He is quite good at helping to fill bags of leaves, but he is better at emptying them. My experience has therefore been that gardening is lots of fun with children aslong as you don't actually require anything bourgeois like a garden with flowers in it.

DH does the garden round here. He lets the DSs "help" for a little while and then sends them back into me

Hmmm. DH is kind of OK at gardening if given a job, its just that you then have to keep telling him to do it "I know you cut the grass last month, its just that it doesn't seem to have taken the hint and has grown".

We dont!

Grass really needs cut before the winter really kicks in - looks like a forest out there, but he is limited to a sunday, and its been so wet lately!

Jess tends to sit in her sandpit playing while DH does it, and I have Becky in the house with me!

Right now, i'd happily put ds1 in a big hole in the garden and leave him there!

hi i have 3 dd's aged 4,3 and 14 weeks.

my girls love helping me in the garden, although it is harder with them helping to be honest.
like you i end up wih dirt all over the lawn, but the girls love learning how to take care of the plants. This year i dug them their own veg plot they grew carrots beetroot, tomatoes and strawberries. next year we are going to plant peas aswell.

I just think how much the girls are learning from being out with me and i think its worth the mess.

have you thought of giving your ds his own plot, to tend.

btw, looking after their veg plot keeps the girls away from my borders which are stocked with allsorts from pinks, lillies, lavender (which they love to smell), dahlia's etc...

another idea is to plant plants that will interest your ds, such as the lavender he can smell or ones that attract butterflies.

My girls have got so interested in gardening that they have handpicked plants to go in the garden and in the house, and they remain their plants. not mine. hth.

I think there's a phase (9 months - about 2.5 years?) when it's really quite difficult. My DD (nearly 4) is now very happy to potter about in the garden with me - pulling up the 'naughty weeds' (and a few flowers too!), planting her own sunflowers, or just digging holes with a trowel. She is much, much better than a year ago, and will often ask things like 'is this a weed?' before uprooting it. That said, she did kill her first lot of sunflowers by tipping them out of the pots to 'see if they were growing' a few too many times!

Agree with bramshott although in my case it was from birth. Neither of my two would tolerate sitting in the buggy watching, although I used to see my neighbour having success with this.

I actually garden when DH is around (Sat am) or at DD's weekend nap times although have to go and kick a few goals past 5yo DS every so often. In the summer I do a lot in the evenings but it is too dark and cold now.

My son is 2 and since he could walk and therefore insist on "helping" he has had his own trowel and hand fork and a huge plastic pot full of old compost to dig in. He will happily "plant" old flower heads and leaves for 30 mins or so before coming and bothering me for another job. If I have to do weeding to stop him pulling everything up I pull up the weed and he runs off with it to my bucket placed at the other end of the garden and then races back for the next weed. Good fun and it wears him out nicely for bed