Planning a Child's Garden
by Emily Skelton

Since my son, Gabriel was born a year and a half ago my life has changed wonderfully and so has my garden. These changes have turned my garden from a strictly adult area into a kid's edible playground and engendered some thoughts about gardening with a toddler in mind. In planning a child's garden assess your piece of land, your climate and soils, think about what you like to look at, what you like to eat, and grow it organically. Now think like a child. A child wants to touch, to smell, to play, to eat, to explore, to use their imagination, and to have fun.

My life has changed, and my garden is changing too. I am more aware of the miraculous moment. I have slowed down, gotten down on my knees, crawled under bushes. I look at things I never noticed before because Gabriel looks at these things. He notices the texture of the bark on a willow tree. He puts soil in his mouth. He eats Picotee Cosmos petals. He picks up a Bird's Nest/Bottle Gourd and carries it around all day. He even wants to sleep with it. I am grateful for his young eyes. His innocent gaze sees everything as brand new. He is truly a teacher for me in this way. With our garden we can enjoy even more exploration of this miraculous world.

Three things to consider including in your Child's Garden are: edible and cut flowers, ornamental vegetables, and structures, such as season extenders and living playhouses. Also, consider having on hand bug collection and observation equipment such as our Macroscope or hand lens.

Eating flowers can be a great source of adventure for a child. My son eats flowers because he is still at the stage where a lot of his exploration of the world is by putting it in his mouth. Later, as children get older, they go through that picky stage. I am a big proponent of having kids try lots of different things to help keep their minds open to new and different foods; however, I would try not to force them to eat any of these flowers. They may reject them completely and then the fun is gone. Make something on your own and let them see how pretty the petals are in a soup or in a muffin. They might get excited by seeing something different. Seeds of Change has so many edible flowers I will only include a few here. Please consult Kitty Morse's Edible Flowers, a Kitchen Companion with Recipes and our website for these and many more edible flower varieties.

Calendula officinalis is spicy and usually used for its beautiful colors, rather than its flavor. 'Pacific Beauty' is a favorite for cooking because it is easier to remove the petals of a single rather than a double variety. Remove petals and leave them whole or chop them. Try adding them to muffins or biscuits. German Chamomile, Matricaria recutita, has adorable small white flowers with a yellow center. They have a sweet taste and combined with mint make a great tea for calming the wild child and is soothing for teething babies. Garden Sage, Salvia officinalis, has a wonderful edible flower spike. Try it dipped in tempura batter and deep fried, or chop it, mix it into cream cheese and spread it on crackers. Chinese Pinks, Dianthus chinensis, has a spicy and clovelike flavor. Remove the white part at the base of the flower if it is bitter. Add these dusky pink and white petals to syrup, sorbet or custard. Scarlet Emperor Runner Bean, Phaseolus coccineus, is more than just a good bean, the flowers are a beautiful scarlet and very edible. Try topping a soup with a little red color or layer a cream cheese sandwich. We have both a yellow and an orange Safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, which are very lovely cut flowers. Try the petals sprinkled over a child's plate of white rice with diced carrots, celery, and peas. It makes a colorful display. Squash blossoms are excellent stuffed with cheese, bread crumbs, rice and cut up sausage or tofu. Deep fry or bake these unique treats. Below is a wonderful recipe for Lavender flowers. Try our new Yellow Lavender, Lavandula viridis.

• 2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup "Lavender Sugar" (1/2 cup dried lavender leaves and flowers, 2 cups superfine sugar)
• _ teaspoon salt
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons dried lavender blossoms
• Mix the butter, lavender sugar, and salt with an electric mixer until fluffy. Pour flour in slowly, blend all ingredients well. Shape dough into a ball and refrigerate for 2 hours. Roll the dough and cut with cookie cutters or cookie stamp. Refrigerate formed cookies for 30 minutes before baking. Bake at 300°F, for 25 to 30 minutes. Makes 2 dozen cookies. (Rosalind Creasy, The Edible Flower Garden)

There are vegetables that are beautiful to look at as well as eat. This year I had our Oxheart carrot growing in its second season just for its beautiful flowers. If you let a carrot stay in the ground (depending on your zone) it will flower and make seed the following year. It is also incredibly attractive to beneficial insects. Other ornamental edibles are Lacinato Blue Kale, Opal Purple Variegated Basil, Afghani Sesame, Osaka Purple Mustard, Wild Garden Chicory, and Golden Giant Amaranth. My son loved the brilliant colors and fuzzy texture of the amaranths I grew in my garden this summer.

Try a selection of our corn varieties. Kids love sweet corn. Our Rainbow Inca and Black Aztec are unque and fun for kids. Also consider growing a flour corn. Fresh corn tortillas are truly too good to describe (See the article we wrote in a previous newsletter on making corn tortillas). The kids will love them. Especially try the Chires Baby corn as the ears are so tiny the kids will think they are cute. If they don't like stir fry, try them steamed with butter. Also, a must try is the Japanese Hulless Popcorn. Popping corn that you grew yourself is as satisfying as it is healthy. Season extenders are fun because they can get the kids outside earlier in the spring and keep them out later in the fall. We are offering a great new Collapsable Coldframe. It is so easy to set up a child could do it. It is similar to a backpacking tent. The fabric is thick and durable with two screened windows that open for ventilation. Gabriel loves to sit inside it on top of the over wintering parsley, but I don't leave him unsupervised.

A fantastic idea I saw in Barbara Damrosch's, Theme Gardens was the idea for a living structure in the garden used for a child's playhouse. Create the framework for the structure out of any rigid material, such a wood or metal. In my garden I have used cow panels which I purchased at the local hardware store. These are 4' by 16' galvanized steel fence panels that are rigid but bendable. I use these to create a round "room" with a door cut in one side. I have grown all kinds of gourds with Heavenly Blue Morning Glories on these trellises. Use wire or woven branches for a roof and the morning glories will climb over the top. Another idea is to create a house or teepee shape out of wood and grow sunflowers around the perimeter. Loosely tie the tops of the sunflowers once they are above six feet tall to close the rooftop. Try growing morning glories or some other climber up the sunflower stalks to fill in the gaps in the "playhouse" wall.

I enjoy spending time with my son, and if I can get him excited about playing outside in the garden with me then I am truly blessed with many things to be thankful for. Blessings to the children for they are our future. Let us attempt to leave them with a healthy and sustainable one.