The Harried Gardener

Your kids, while scruffy, are alive and well-fed. Your garden, on the other hand, would be dialing 911 if it had fingers.

How is that you can keep human children alive—complex, needy, multi-faceted creatures that they are—while you can’t make a patch of pansies survive the summer?

The answer? It’s difficult to nurture your garden properly while little people are nipping at your heels and latching onto your nipples.

What busy moms need are plants that do one of two useful things: take care of themselves, or amuse the kids. Pint-size gardeners love to watch things grow, and can be motivated to weed and water if sufficiently captivated. Our solutions:

1. Choose plants that thrive on neglect.
Turns out what’s good for mom is good for the environment too.  Xeriscape gardening is about designing your flowerbeds to use very little water, so you can appear virtuous instead of just lazy. Incorporate river stones, landscape rocks and walkways, then install drought-resistant plants like English lavender, ornamental grasses and natural wildflowers.

2. Mulch, mulch, mulch.
A well-mulched garden suffers less moisture loss and so gets by on less hose time. Mulch is also a great natural weed-blocker. You can use wood chips, bark, pine needles or shredded leaves. Or plant easy-care groundcovers like periwinkle, lily-of-the-valley, thyme or spotted dead nettle (not as menacing as it sounds).

3. Plant low-care perennials.
The magic of perennials is that you only have to plant them once. Among the easiest to grow in the Ottawa area are purple coneflower, black-eyed Susans, hostas, forget-me-nots, daylilies and goldenrod.

4. Attract butterflies.
Also known as the one-minute science project, milkweed grows everywhere, spreads easily, and feeds caterpillars destined to become Monarch butterflies. Your kids can watch the hairy critters chomp through the leaves, form chrysalises, turn into butterflies and take off for Mexico.

5. Engage your kids.
Kids are not known for their penchant for delayed gratification. They want to watch their seeds turn into flowers right now. They also enjoy plants they can eat, or that have an interesting texture, smell or appearance. So try no-fail specimens like scarlet runner beans, chives, mint, rosemary, lamb’s ears, nasturtiums or sunflowers.

With these rules in mind and a visit to your local nursery, you can get your garden off life support and your kids doing most of the work. Then you can pull up a lawn chair and watch the grass grow.

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