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Collection of 24 wonderful gardening books for children
Garden Toys
If your child doesn’t have their own play garden toys, I recommend using them. My kids LOVE their rake, trowel, and watering can. (Used in soil and in sandboxes.) You can have everything you need in one set like this one.
Additionally, many children (including me) love to make fairy gardens or small indoor terrariums. Both are interesting indoor gardening options. However, you can also buy doors and accessories for an outdoor fairy garden. It may be expensive but even with a few fairy garden toys it will provide hours and days of imaginative play.
Gardening Books for Kids
The Little Gardener by Jan Gerardi
Open the lid of this colorful board book to learn the big ideas about gardening – shovels, buckets, rakes, seeds, and more.
Thank You, Garden by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Simone Shin
Perfect for spring reading, this is a lyrical celebration of a thriving community garden with diverse characters. The illustrations invite readers to participate in the friendships and communities that grow with the trees. Beautiful.
Lola Plants a Garden by Anna McQuiinn, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
Lola wants to plant a garden. First, she and her mother checked out books about gardening from the library. Then choose what they will grow and buy seeds. Next, they dug, planted, and waited. You will love this Lola story as well as others and witness the sequential transition from planning, planting, and growing from seed to flowering.
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Bold, engaging illustrations and minimalist text share the story of a child and mother planting a colorful garden. This is the perfect first gardening book to learn about growing plants including names of flowers, bulbs, and seeds.
Goodnight, Veggies by Diana Murry and Zachariah O’Hora
Soothing rhymes and short alliterative phrases help children fall asleep while introducing them to different vegetables and gardening techniques. Enchanted! Eggplants, cucumbers, yams, beets, and all the garden vegetables are ready to go to sleep.
Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
Can you grow vegetables to make soup? Learn how to choose seeds, plant, weed, harvest, wash, chop and make soup! A fun introduction to the farm-to-table concept and a great first gardening book.
We Are the Gardeners by Janna Gains and Kids
This is a must-read gardening book, especially when planning and planting your own garden. The story celebrates family, hard work perseverance, and the practical work of gardening. Whimsical illustrations throughout perfectly complement the engaging story of growing crops, enduring trials, building fences, and harvesting.
Plant the Tiny Seed by Christie Matheson
Use your imagination as you read and touch, rub, press, shake, clap, etc. to help plant a garden. All seeds need is water, rain, and sunshine to grow and you can help. An interactive gardening book your young readers will love!
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
See what’s happening both above and below ground as a little girl and her grandmother work in the garden from the beginning of the spring planting season until fall gives way to cold snow. It’s a large book with wonderful illustrations and engaging descriptions.
Zinnia’s Flower Garden by Monica Wellington
Zinnia plants flowering seeds then waits and writes in her diary while her sprouts grow into flowers. The borders of the pages include information about the parts of a flower as well as the different types of flowers in the Zinnia garden. In late fall, Zinnia finds ripe seeds forming in the flowers that she will save to plant next year.
The Gardener by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small
You will love this gardening book! Lydia Grace Finch helps transform the city with seeds that grow into beautiful flowers and helps her grow a rooftop garden.
Miguel’s Community Garden by JaNay Brown-Wood, illustrated by Samara Hardy
Explore the garden with Miguel in this interactive story as he searches for a sunflower. As you search, learn about plants like artichokes, cherries, mulberries, spinach, and more. Finally, you find a tall flower with yellow petals, a round center, a smooth green color, and pointed leaves – a sunflower! A fun and educational introduction to garden plants with compare and contrast thinking.
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
When Liam discovers an abandoned garden, he decides to help it grow. As it grows, it spreads its green vitality throughout the dark, gray city.
Anywhere Farm by Phyllis Root, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
Where can you grow a farm? This book explores many possibilities: in buckets, crates, windows, barrels, cups balconies, etc. What can you grow? Who can visit? (Think birds and insects.) And how do you get started? You only need a farmer (that’s you) and a small seed. Perhaps this gardening book will inspire a spring garden or two!
Caterpillar and Bean A First Science Storybook by Martin Jenkins, illustrated by Hannah Tolson
This is the story of a seed inserted into a crack. Watch how the roots push out the buds and leaves. This is also the story of a caterpillar that hatches from an egg, eats leaves, and turns into a beautiful butterfly. A wonderful nature book for early readers.
Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan A. Shea, illustrated by Tom Slaughter
Help children think about what is alive and what is not. Interactive and playful, this book will help your child think and learn.
I Love Strawberries! by Shannon Anderson, illustrated by Jaclyn Sinquett
This enthusiastic girl is determined to grow strawberries. After successfully convincing her parents, she learned that strawberries are difficult to grow because they costs money, you have to watch out for bird attacks, and you need to pick strawberries when they are ripe. But soon, she was eating all kinds of strawberry foods and selling her abundance of strawberries to her neighbors.
Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals, illustrated by Ashley Wolff
What a lively and essential gardening book! The lyrical, rhythmic a to z text tells you everything you can use in your compost stew accompanied by beautiful collage art.
And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead
A boy and his dog look at the dreary landscape and hope to plant a seed. They watched and waited as the brown finally turned to green.
Yucky Worms by Vivian French, illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg
Gardeners love worms and this book shares why along with facts about worms and how they help the garden. An absolute pleasure!
Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
Rebecca likes gardening but she hates pumpkins. So when a pumpkin fell off the truck near her yard, she shoveled dirt on it and forgot about it. Until… pumpkin seeds sprouted and pumpkins took over her garden. She realized that pumpkins and pumpkin recipes could spread joy in her community.
Rachel’s Day in the Garden: A Kids Yoga Spring Colors Book by Giselle Shardlow of Kids Yoga Stories, illustrated by Hazel Quintanilla
This sweet picture book tells the story of Rachel and her dog Sammy waking up on a rainy day in the garden. As she looks for signs of spring, readers can try out the poses in the circled boxes. The story has a perfect text-to-image ratio and the multimedia collage artwork is truly amazing. The book ends with four pages of keywords, poses, and illustrations of how to do each.
The Fairy Garden by Georgia Buckthorn, illustrated by Isabella Mazzanti
A little girl named Mimi wanted to create a fairy garden so she pulled weeds and sprayed insecticide. After several days passed without any fairies coming to her garden, they explained that the bug spray hurt them and that they also preferred weeds and leaves. Mimi changed her approach and created a safe, welcoming space for the fairies they love, without the need for sprays and weeds.
