Encouraging Your Children to Use Your Garden

A child playing outside is often perceived a thing of the past these days. Younger generations are known to favour the sofa and a television coupled with a smartphone or tablet, rather than exploring the great outdoors. This is definitely a shame, being outside comes with being more active and healthy, and it also opens up a whole host of learning opportunities.

So whether it’s going for a yomp on the hills, perhaps fishing in the river or simply sitting in the garden and maybe doing a spot of gardening. It’s fantastic to encourage your child to spend time outside and help them find ways to enjoy it.

It is the job of landscape architects across the country to create public spaces for children and young people to enjoy the outdoors. From parks and playgrounds to football pitches and tennis courts, architects will work to ensure that these spaces are safe, engaging and a great space for young people to be. To find out more about landscape architects in Norfolk, click here

So while the government and local authorities are finding ways to get children out of the house and encourage them into public spaces, what ways can you help encourage your child to spend more time in the garden?

The best way to encourage your children to use the garden is make it a lovely place to spend time in. Of course this requires a little bit of a green thumb, but it could be a project that your family can work on together. Whether its herbs, hanging baskets or hammocks, improving your garden with your children is a fantastic way to both bond and broaden your child’s interests.

If you already have a beautifully pruned and manicured lawn and there appears to be no way to improve your garden together, then why not give a space in the garden for your child to take care of? This will help to develop their sense of responsibility and also get their creative juices flowing. Give them a budget and let them do whatever they want (within reason) with the space. It could be popping to the garden centre and letting them pick their favourite plants or flowers in a favourite colour, or even extend to painting and decorating rocks to have in their garden patch. If your child loves insects and minibeasts, then set your child a task of researching plants that attract particular bugs, plant them, wait for them to work their magic and then examine them together.


Working together or teaching your child how to maintain the garden is a great way for them to experience something different and even help to understand the importance of accountability, if they don’t care for their garden, it will die, if they put time into it – it will flourish. If you’ve decided to go down the vegetable gardening path then it’s a perfect way to teach your child about food waste. Eating the food that you have grown is a fantastic way to demonstrate that food does not magically appear on the shelves at a supermarket and it requires time, effort and energy to grow. When your child doesn’t finish their plate but then asks for pudding, simply remind them wasting food is bad for the environment and money – using food they have helped grow as an example.

Another superb way of encouraging your child to get outside and use the garden is to invest in some garden furniture for it. Include them in the selection process so that they feel involved and sit out there together. Dine al fresco where possible and when it’s sunny spend time reading outside. Outdoor games are also a brilliant way to get the family outside. Consider investing in a swingball set, some water pistols and a Frisbee as these are all brilliant ways to spend a little time outside when the weather permits.