Our tulips, so proudly planted out by our eldest, that I have previously talked about, have been reduced somewhat in stature, by her younger brother. This is his first real season of realizing he can pick flowers, and does not need to simply look at them, or caress their petals in the slightly clumsy way he did last year, at the age of just about one. 

So, when he saw another young lad, old enough to know that some flowers (weeds) are acceptable picking fodder, who was visiting, pick a dandelion and dutifully present it to his mother, ours of course had to make a grab for something bigger and better than a dandelion to present to his mum.

And so the bright red tulips are now lacking more of their number, and we have a rather mangled tulip in a glass of water on the patio table.

So you may think we are gluttons for punishment, but it seems entirely natural that children want to garden. Or at least pull up earthworms to relocate to the compost heap or go ‘YUK’ and ‘EARGH’ at earwigs scurrying around after their peace is shattered as the pebble they were resting under is suddenly displaced by inquisitive fingers.

Anyway. we have tried to do easy kids gardening before (sunflowers, radishes, that sort of thing) all with little success, and lots of lost interest after the shoots have not appeared in the first few hours. Partly this is because of lack of water, or too much water, in equal measures (with anything involving kids and water usually ending in some sort of disaster).

So this year we have implemented a simple raised bed arrangement, with the help of a sandpit kit, and a lot of well rotted compost. So far this has been supplemented with raddish, lettuce and possibly dwarf bean seeds, and liberal amounts of water. Well lots of water straight after they were all planted, but not much since. This was a few days ago and so far, I don’t think the seeds have been dug up for random progress checks, but I suspect we won’t know until they start to sprout. Will keep you updated on progress, but now that the kids are in bed, must go and apply water liberally, to give them at least a fighting chance.

About the end of last year, we were given a present of a small metal bucket, complete with a number of tulip bulbs, and a small bag of compost. I can’t now remember how many bulbs but it would have been eight or ten, certainly no more as the bucket was only of modest size.

These bulbs were dutifully planted out by our then five year old, and lo and behold we now have a bucket of bright red tulips. They took a little while to actually flower and at one point I feared the slugs had got to them (perhaps that is where the missing bulbs ended up), but now there is satisfactory showing. Whilst the bucket is not the most beautiful thing in the world, if you see something similar in the shops come autumn time, this is not a bad present, particularly for children.