Where the wild THINGS GROW

Encourage young ones to run, play and dig into the joy of being outside, then nurture a love of gardening

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If you have children or grandkids and a garden, little good comes of being precious about either. As long as a sizeable area of the garden is child-friendly, it’s a fantastic place for the young to play, learn and let their imagination run wild. Let them, unfettered by a list of constraints, trample through the shrubbery, make huts under the bushes and mud pies in the dirt. Let them run on the lawn, roll, kick a ball and lie back to cloud-gaze.

Children have enormous amounts of energy, and a lawn and paths are perfect for using it. A lawn doesn't have to be vast - just long enough to run up and down. Deficiencies in length can be ameliorated by turning the area into a track by creating a central bed - two beds can make a figure-eight track. Or mow a simple maze in it. By the same reasoning, a path right around the house is more fun than one with a dead end.

Child's play

Trees to climb are almost mandatory for most children of most ages. Teach young ones the three-point rule - always have three limbs in contact with the tree at any one time - and they should be fine. To be extra safe, ensure no rocks or other hard or sharp objects are on the ground below.

While specially built mud kitchens are fine, letting children knead, squish and splash in real soil is more immersive and liberating. Ever tactile, mud easily becomes part of all manner of imaginative play beyond mud pies and witchy brews.

The soil is also where interesting creatures - worms, slugs, earwigs among them - can be encountered. Encourage children to observe them - a spider spinning a web, a slater curling up in a ball when touched, beetles scurrying away when disturbed under a rock or log. Spot - and hear - the bees, butterflies and other flying insects busying themselves on the flowers or eating the leaves. Ladybird, ladybird... Eat me some aphids. Nature Study 101 begins in the garden.

Seeds & flowers