Learning to Garden

A children's gardening set gives a young gardener their own tools, sized for small hands, to dig, rake and water beside you. Here you will find tool kits with bags, aprons and gloves, a wooden spade, and nature kits for exploring the garden, all for ages 3 and up.

Child's gardening tools: which kit to choose

• 3 tools and a tote bag: a light first kit to carry from the shed to the flower bed.
• 6 tools and a watering can in a bag set: everything needed for a small bed of their own, from digging to watering.
• Sky blue or rosy pink tool kits: the same idea in two colours, handy for siblings who each want their own.
• Little gardener set with waterproof apron, gloves and tools, for muddy days.
• Metal and wood gardening tools for children ready for sturdier tools in firm soil.

The multi-colour wooden garden spade works in the sandpit as well as in the vegetable patch. Children's garden tools work best when they really dig, the same idea as Montessori toys indoors: a trowel that bites into the soil keeps a child going far longer than a toy that only scratches the surface.

Gardening toys for 3 year olds and up

At 3, a child mostly wants to dig and to water, often the same spot over and over. Give them a corner of their own and a pot of fast seeds such as cress or radishes, and let the watering can do the rest. By 4, they can follow a row, pull the weeds you point to and check each morning whether anything has come up. A kids gardening set makes a good spring or birthday gift for exactly that age.

Beyond the trowel: nature kits and flower presses

The outdoor explorer kit, with fishing net, magnifier jar and tongs, lets a child scoop up a pond snail, watch it through the magnifier jar, then tip it gently back. The snail and songbird flower presses, from 3 and 4 years, keep the petals and leaves picked on a walk, ready to become a home herbarium.

Press a leaf from the same tree each season and by next summer your child has a small record of the garden's year.