10 Ways to Make Gardening More Fun

By maximizing the magic and minimizing the chores, our readers bring out the green thumb in their kids. Here are their best projects, tips, and activities.

1. CREATE A LOVING GARDEN
Faced with a bounty of choices, how does a flower gardener decide what to plant? For Ann O'Keefe of Lisle, Illinois, the answer was to let love lead the way. She and her kids, Patrick and Erin, asked close friends and relatives to name their favorite flowers, which were then incorporated into the O'Keefes' planting scheme. For years, the garden has bloomed with family favorites like Aunt Lisa's Irises and Papa's Peonies. Today, both kids are teenagers, but their time in the "loving garden" helped nurture a passion for nature that persists today. As it happens, so do some of the original flowers. "After all these years," says Ann, "it's nice to have a living reminder of the people who've meant the most to us."

2. GROW VEGGIES FROM VEGGIES
After my daughter, Lily, and I planted our first vegetable garden together, she emerged with a better sense of where her food came from -- but she still thought seeds originated in a paper packet. To disabuse her of that notion, I let her rescue a few tomato seeds from her tossed salad, dry them on paper towels, and stow them away until next spring. By the time her first seedlings poked up, she'd absorbed an important lesson about the circle of life.
Tip: If you want to save your own seeds, start with green beans or peppers -- reliable and easy to grow -- and store them in paper bags in a cool, dry place.

3. WATCH A PLANT TAKE ROOT
Gardening often demands patience -- a quality that kids, alas, don't always have in ample supply. So when Tracy Parker, a former elementary school teacher from Plymouth, Massachusetts, was starting seeds indoors with her three sons, she adapted a classroom experiment that shortened the wait. "The kids plant their seeds in clear plastic cups, close to the side," she explains -- a technique that affords them a worm's-eye view of the action. "They love to see the roots forming," says Tracy, "and they get so excited when the sprout pops out."

4. CHART A GARDEN'S GROWTH
Families know all about charting their kids' growth, so it's not surprising that some of them have found fun ways to chart their garden's growth too. For instance, each year the Cordeiros of West Warwick, Rhode Island -- Jacob, age 6, Sarah, 4, mom Kimberly, and dad John -- track the growth of a sunflower. First, they trace their bodies and draw a 10-foot ruler on butcher paper. Then they measure the sunflower weekly and track its progress next to the ruler and family members' heights. The project is more than mere fun: "Because they're so excited to see the sunflower grow," explains Kimberly, "they take great care of it -- and all the plants around it."

5. MAKE WEEDING A GAME
How do you get your kids to "weed" when they might not know what a weed is? For Kim Justen of Advance, North Carolina, the solution was to engage their sense of play. "When my kids were little and wanted to help in the garden, we gave each of them one variety of weed and asked them to pull up only those plants that matched it," she says. Years later, her kids -- Kathleen, age 9, and David, 7 -- are still playing the game. "They have fun," says Kim, "and I get help in the garden."

6. OPEN A FAMILY FARMERS' MARKET
To spark a passion for gardening in her two younger boys, Loriel Karlik of Coupeville, Washington, appealed to their entrepreneurial spirit. After offering them their choice of vegetable seeds, she staked out a plot for them and offered to pay farmers' market prices for their produce. The boys devised business plans, one planting zucchini for its abundance and long harvest, the other, radishes for a quick return, followed by squash and cucumbers for diversity. The end result: horticultural and financial bounty -- and a love of gardening that Loriel hopes will last a lifetime.

7. HAND DOWN A GARDENING TRADITION
Richard Todd, a lifelong gardener whose love of growing things was nurtured by his grandfather more than half a century ago, was eager to cultivate the same passion in his own grandson, Tommy. And when his daughter, Emily, and her husband, Liam, moved to a house with a spacious backyard in Florence, Massachusetts, Richard knew just the crop to intrigue a growing gardener. For three years now, Richard and Tommy have worked together in a backyard pumpkin patch. The two choose from a variety of exotic pumpkin seeds, then all three generations thrill to the sight of the expanding vine. "It's stunning to see how they take over during the course of a season," says Emily. And Tommy loves working alongside his Papa. The payoff for Tommy's grandfather? Some pumpkins, yes, but mostly, priceless time in the garden with his favorite assistant.

8. GROW A SNOWMAN GARDEN
A lucky accident was the source of a genuinely cool gardening tradition for the Shilling family of Mount Vernon, Washington. One summer, Teri Shilling and her son, Craig, age 9, planted a batch of carrots in their garden but never got around to harvesting them. That winter, the family was putting the finishing touches on a snowman when a last-minute dash to the refrigerator revealed a disappointing lack of -- you guessed it -- carrots. But then Teri had an idea: "I remembered the ones we'd left in the ground, and sure enough, we dug through the snow and pulled up beautiful carrots." From then on, the Shillings made sure to plant extra carrots in a special corner of the garden for fresh-from-the-ground snowman trimmings.

9. PLANT SOME PET FOOD
Growing your own food has taken on a whole new meaning for the Salyers family of Homestead, Florida. With the arrival of their new pet iguana, Rocky, 9-year-old Hunter and his mom, Kim, discovered that most of the foods iguanas favor -- parsley, collard greens, red hibiscus -- could be easily grown in their backyard garden. So they put in a special lizard crop, which Hunter tends and harvests with enthusiasm. "He loves being involved in the whole process, from planting to picking to feeding," says Kim.

10. DIG INTO FAMILYFUN.COM
Our Web site has dozens of great family gardening activities. To get complete instructions for any of the following, search our site by the project's name.

Garden Playhouse: Train climbing vines over an arch of chicken wire to create an enchanted, shady space.

Topsy-turvy Tomatoes: Grow tomatoes upside down in a hanging planter.

Sunflower Digs: Strategically plant sunflower seeds to make a towering, flowering hideout for kids.

Mrs. Green Beans: Create a wooden scarecrow that features a flowerpot head and a skirt of climbing bean plants.

Stepping-stones: Make your family's own walk of fame with personalized cement stepping-stones.

Source: Family Fun