In this weekend’s gardening column, I discuss the many benefits and the importance gardening has for children.
As the summer looms in to sight many parents are planning an array of activities to keep their children active and to ensure they stay in touch with their friends and classmates.
Gardening in general is a very important life skill and teaches children and adults alike so much.
Unfortunately, I feel that there is a skills and knowledge gap from the older generation on how they worked the land and grew their foods.
I believe that these skills and knowledge need to be re-instilled once again and to ensure they are not entirely lost.
We live in a world where many find it difficult to distinguish the difference between many of our common fruit and vegetables. Is this a problem?
Gardening teaches us to take responsibility from either ensuring a tiny seed germinates and becomes a seedling to ensuring that this tiny seedling becomes an established plant.
The seed won’t germinate overnight and neither will the seedling become an established plant in an instance. This teaches us to be patient. A skill almost lost in today’s society where we tend to expect everything to happen at the click of our fingers.
Learn to accept failure and from failure we learn. Not every single seed you sow will become a seedling and not every seedling will become a plant. As someone once told me, a mistake is a mistake unless you learn from it then it’s a lesson. This very much applies to the gardening world.
We tend to learn so much more from not succeeding and it encourages and teaches us to succeed. I think that’s one of the important lessons that gardening can teach anyone.
If we develop an understanding of how nature and the environment work, we then can have a better understanding to make changes.
If we learn how the cycle of photosynthesis and how trees grow we can then understand how critically important they are to us and our very existence.
We owe our very existence to around 15cm of soil and from this we grow most of the food that feeds the world. If we can appreciate and learn about what makes soils so important then we can go and protect it.
Horticulture can prove to be a very interesting and rewarding career. We need more young people pursuing a career in it too. By getting children to develop an interest and understanding at a young age, at a later stage perhaps they would pursue a career.
As I discussed in a previous gardening column gardening has so many benefits for our mental and physical health. It can also be a brilliant social activity to get together, share some gardening stories and what you’re currently growing.
I will be delivering a two-hour gardening workshop aimed at children between the ages of 9 to 12 years old at The BASE Enterprise Centre in Stranorlar. The workshop will run from 10am-12am and will cover the importance of soil, the superpowers of seeds and children will grow their very own sunflower too.
More information on Facebook page or contact me via email or Whatsapp.
Happy Gardening!
Conor Gallinagh
BAgrSc, Horticulture, Landscape, & Sportsturf Management
MCIHort
Website: conorgallinagh.com
Email: cghorticultureconsultant@gmail.com
Facebook: Conor Gallinagh – Horticulture Consultant
Instagram: @conorgallinagh
Twitter: @ConorGallinagh
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