Favorite Gardening-Themed Books for Toddlers and Preschoolers
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This spring as we prepared a garden I decided to do a bit of a gardening book rotation as well. I went on a search for books about gardening that captured the magic of seeds becoming plants and the patience required. This reinforced our hands-on learning as we planted the seeds. These books became some of my favorites I have added to our library. My three-year-old loved these and I highly recommend adding them to your bookshelf.
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt: In this book, a grandmother and her granddaughter plant a garden together. They experience the realities of gardening: waiting, watering, hot days, and the cycle from waiting to plant to harvesting and waiting again. This book is a beautiful look at what happens up above the garden and what is simultaneously happening down below.
We Are the Gardeners: This is another book with beautiful illustrations and a real look at what can go well and what can go wrong when gardening. The gardeners (a family in this book) persevere as they make many mistakes along the way. This is a wonderful celebration of trying and failing and trying again.
Harlem Grown: I really appreciate the depiction here of urban gardening. Whether you live in a small apartment in New York City like we used to or in the suburbs with your own garden like we have now, nature is around you. This book is about a community garden put in by a Harlem elementary school. I recommend it for families who live in New York City but also those who have no experience with cities. It is a wonderful way to be exposed to how gardening looks even in one of the biggest cities in the world.
Miss Rumphius: If you don’t have this book, now is the time to get it. This is a gorgeous book about a lady who makes the world more beautiful with her flowers. This is a book I have held onto from my childhood and I absolutely recommend to anyone interested in sharing the beauty of gardening and flowers.
A Little More Beautiful: This is another book about Alice from Miss Rumphius and is also a slightly different but also beautiful depiction of her story. I didn’t grow up with this one like I did with Miss Rumphius but it is beautiful all the same.
Finding Wild: This book isn’t strictly about gardening but is about finding the wilderness even within a big city. We enjoyed having it as part of our plants and gardening unit. I like the idea of it opening up conversations about nature being everywhere, even in places we do not expect it.
This is the Tree We Planted: In this book, a class plants a tree, and in the style of This is the House that Jack Built we get to appreciate much of what trees do and how our planting contributes to the greater world.
Who Will Plant a Tree: This is another one about tree planting but here it is the animals doing the work to plant seeds. It is a look at how animals can spread seeds and contribute to the growth of trees. I loved watching some of the ways seeds spread that I hadn’t necessarily thought about.
Bee: A Peek-Through Book: My son loves this series of peek-through books and I have to agree, they are pretty special. This one looks at how bees contribute to the gardens and their necessary part in allowing our gardens to grow.
