Whether you’re a parent hoping to involve your kids in gardening or a teacher using Tower Garden to engage your students, you’ll find that planning a kid-friendly Tower Garden is pretty simple.
Bonus: There’s also a good chance there will be fun and imagination along the way!
10 Plants for a Kid-Friendly Garden
These crops all offer something special, whether it’s a fragrance or texture or bright colour. In alphabetical order:
- Cherry tomatoes are cute and tasty to pop into your mouth.
- Chilli peppers are spicy! Many varieties are colourful, too.
- Herbs grow easily and engage multiple senses. You might try starting with basil, coriander, lavender, mint, or rosemary.
- Mini sunflowers are bright, beautiful, and edible. If you’re growing outdoors, sunflowers will attract pollinators (more of nature your kids can study!).*
- Mustard greens are colourful and peppery—a great way to make healthy salads more interesting.
- Nasturtiums are hardy, pest-repellent, fast growers (i.e., ideal for beginners). They also have a delightfully tangy flavour.*
- Pumpkins take time to grow. But they’re worth the wait!
- Snap peas grow quickly and are delicious treats to eat raw right off your Tower Garden.
- Strawberries are probably the closest thing to candy you can grow.*
- Watermelons offer juicy refreshment. Save the seeds and grow more!*
*Many flowers and fruiting crops will only do well outdoors because they need help from pollinators. If you’re growing indoors, are interested in experimenting, and can spare the extra time, you can always try hand-pollinating those crops!
Arranging Your Kid-Friendly Tower Garden
Simply put, it’s always best to plant in a pyramid shape — small plants at the top and bigger ones at the bottom. For example:
- Top: Herbs, flowers
- Middle: Mustard greens, nasturtiums, snap peas
- Bottom: Cherry tomatoes, chilli peppers, pumpkin, watermelon (two large vine plants = the recommended max per tower)
You can also download and fill out a handy worksheet for your Tower Garden HOME.
How Much to Plant
What does your crew like to eat, or what are you planning to eat more of? Here’s a starting point to get you and your helpers thinking about what will work best for you:
- Bell peppers: 1–2
- Butternut squash: 1
- Aubergine: 1
- Green beans: 4+
- Herbs: 1 of each
- Lettuces: 5–10
- Spaghetti squash: 1
- Sugar snap peas: 4+
- Summer squash: 1
- Tomatoes: 1-2
- Courgette: 1
With Tower Garden HOME, you can grow up to 32 plants at once (16 full-size plants and 16 baby greens).
