How to get kids to love a garden

The workshops were labelled 'Suitable for adults only' mostly because they involved a two-hour lecture and Q&A , plus we had water holes and other farm dangers where kids needed the supervision we couldn't provide. Babies on laps/in back packs were welcomed, but a 10-year-old and a two-hour garden lecture?

But Grandma was right. The kid told us solemnly before they left that he'd had the most wonderful day of his life. Though he hadn't so much as inspected an apple tree. Instead as soon as they arrived he had spied morning tea and asked if he could have a choc chip biscuit ... then a slice of apple cake ... then homemade lemon cordial.

We were a bit extravagant with the morning and afternoons teas because I enjoy cooking. I like feeding people even more. There were usually a dozen or so kinds of cakes and biscuits, kumara scones with jam and cream, assorted sandwiches, hot zucchini slice, not quite sausage rolls and quiches, platters of watermelon and other fruit...

During the two-hour lecture Monsieur the Gardener ate his way steadily down the table, then back up once again. He didn't guzzle. All was tasted, appreciated, before he proceeded to the next plate, and the next...

He was still thoughtfully munching when we came back from the garden tour, and took a last pikelet with loquat jam just as the bus was leaving. I suspect he is now the food critic of a most respected journal ... and it was indeed the best day of his life, three-and-half hours of uninterrupted eating of home cooked and mostly home grown treats.

I'd have felt exactly the same when I was 10, though the nearest I ever got to such a spread was afternoon tea after the local cricket matches. (Why has this essential ritual declined? Cricket without cheese and tomato or curried egg sandwiches and squashed fly biscuits and lemonade and scones just isn't ... cricket.)

'Gardening' when I was a kid was dad swearing at the lawn mower when it wouldn't start, or my being ordered to hold the hose over the wilting strawberry patch on Sunday afternoons.

The best garden for kids is one they can eat, preferably food they will never find in a supermarket or that is too expensive to eat a lot of, with something new and delicious to try every month, or every week if possible.

As years go by the kids who love gardens because they are an adventure in deliciousness will also discover the magic of planting a stick in winter that becomes a summer tree; or scattering lettuce seed that will eventually turn itself into a salad, and that to achieve that you need to dig, weed, feed etc. But till then the weeding stuff mostly seems a form of slavery imposed by adults.

If you want kids to grow into adults who love the scent of soil and the song of trees, plant a food garden for them, the intriguing kind where they are never quite sure what is going to be ripe next - or what it will taste like when it is.

For example:

Mulberry trees: hardy, almost unkillable, but fruit best with food and water. Try a dwarf one for prolific fruit for many months from spring through summer.

Native limes: These survive anything except the kind of bushfire that turns the soil to glass. Look for the red-fleshed limes with tart, bright scarlet globules to bite into. If you feed and water the trees regularly they'll fruit in all but the coolest winter months.

Cumquats: not sour calamondins, often sold as 'Aussie cumquats' but the true sweet miniature fruit you can eat skin and all.

Miniature apples and pears: miniature fruit, that is, not dwarf trees, though dwarf apple trees are great for kids as they are tempted by ripe red fruit hanging at nose height.

Loquats: the taste may not be stupendous but it is fun seeing how far you can spit the seeds. Loquat jam, on the other hand, is excellent.

Thornless blackberries: NOT the other kind, and even so, keep an eye in case your blackberry plants make a dash for freedom. But all the brambleberries are great fun, as a few will be ripe every day for months.

Dwarf cherries: self-pollinating, like Stella. It is impossible to eat enough cherries.

Apricots: It is impossible to feel you have eaten enough apricots, though four hours later your digestive system may disagree.

Raspberries: Grow early, mid-season and autumn fruiting varieties. Pick before breakfast with the dew still on them.

Macadamias: the ripe ones fall and can be gathered on the ground

Strawberries: choose several varieties and they may crop from mid-spring to mid-autumn, though there'll be fewer fruit in hot weather. Mulch extremely well, and hill some so they get the maximum sun for early fruiting.

Snow peas: Plant early to late spring then again in late summer. Be warned: it is rare to get a meal of snow peas if kids can forage them in the garden.

Round carrots: plant after frosts; they'll crop from early summer to early spring the next year. Wash well, then crunch. No peeling required.

Purple or red popping corn: Kids can harvest this mid-summer to late autumn if you sow in spring to December. Great for colour, and fun to pop. Also delicious...

Cherry tomatoes: preferably red and yellow and pear-shaped ones as well as round fruit.

The perfect harvests for kids also need to be low enough for small people to pick their own, or the tree needs to be climbable so tiny hands can reach the fruit. It is amazing how far you can spit a loquat seed if you find a high branch to sit on and aim over a footpath. You can become extremely accurate too. But don't let on I told you so.

*We no longer give garden tours or workshops.