I walk through our gardens, I am reminded of my childhood. The afternoons spent outdoors, making mud pies and tending to our little garden plots. Little did I know, but the garden had many lessons for me and would continue to shape me long into my adult years. Now, as I raise my own children and watch them run down the garden paths barefoot, laughing and shouting, I am reminded of these lessons. The garden is one of the best teachers.

My children don’t realize it now, but the garden is growing them as much as they are growing it. Of course, there are lessons like using the measuring tape to mark out their plant rows, counting out the seeds, and writing the name tags for the little sprouts. These lessons provide practical life skills. There are other lessons to be learned, though, ones that make gardening worth all the investment in the world.

The garden is a safe place for children to learn, explore, experience cause and effect, and even to fail. It is a space where they can learn the difficult lesson of patience while waiting for those tiny seeds to sprout, and later for those same plants to yield a harvest. Many summer afternoons, my children will carefully examine the rows of watermelon plants in the garden. In the autumn, the anticipation continues while they guess whose pumpkin will be the largest.

Our children also have the incredible opportunity to grow up in our greenhouses, Ellie’s Eden. This time of year, their mornings begin early when the sun is barely peeking over the orchard trees to the east. They race each other down the driveway from our home to the row of greenhouses, eager to help their uncle Friedrich gather the plants for customers around the country. When you walk into the greenhouses, you’re greeted by the beautiful smell of the rich potting soil and growing plants. It takes the children and me all of our self-control not to begin trying to plant our spring garden in January… yet another lesson in patience. They come home dreaming of the gardens they will plant when the soil is finally warm enough and the snow has melted.

As spring turns to summer, the greenhouse season slows down, and the gardening season begins in earnest. Those little seeds are now plants that require care to thrive. Another lesson is waiting to be learned. It surprises me how young toddlers can learn to distinguish between a tomato plant and a weed. All ages are welcome in the garden. The four-year-old sits alongside me, and we chat as we pull the little weeds by hand. My ten-year-old is an expert at meticulously weeding around each young plant, while the six-year-old energetically and accurately uses a hoe to weed along the paths. Those rows feel awfully long on a hot summer day, and yet the lesson of diligence cannot be skipped over.

There are times when I allow the children to learn the lesson of failure in the garden. Neglecting to water or weed the garden can quickly impact yields or even lead to crop failure. I have also had my fair share of crop failures. Yet, I don’t consider it a waste as long as something was learned through the experience. Sometimes these lessons require us to ask questions. Why did the squash patch in the clover field produce more pumpkins than the ones in the garden? What other cover crops might help increase yields? What about this cover crop is aiding the soil? Allowing the children to ask these questions and directing them to resources to find the answers builds confidence. My goal is not to teach my children the answer to every problem they will face; my aim is to give them the skills needed to solve problems for themselves. Now, what at the surface level looked like a failure is actually just another lesson from the garden.