Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together With Children

Rating:
Summary: Gardening Adventures
Review: Reading this book is like exploring a garden; there are new discoveries every time you look. Much more than a "how-to" garden book, "Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together With Children" takes you and your child on a gardening adventure. Author Sharon Lovejoy weaves garden planning, plant care, nature explorations, science, art, and storytelling into creative garden themes.

For example, the Moon Garden features fragrant, luminous flowers twining around a pole tent. Sit in the tent at night to discover that "fragrance is the color of night." Along the way, learn which animals are active at night, how to tell the temperature by listening to crickets, and how to attract moths with homemade moth broth. At the end of the season, hold a seed-saving party.

In the Zuni Waffle Garden, "dig into the ancient traditions of Native American gardeners and harvest some of their best ideas for your own backyard." Learn about waxing and waning moon cycles, plant the "Three Sisters of Life" like the Iroquois, and sing a traditional Indian song to your plants. Finish off the season with a harvest celebration by making Indian corn jewelry and cornstalk animals.

The author's enchanting watercolors are a perfect match to the text, and even children who cannot read will enjoy looking at the colorful garden images.

In Gardening Basics, Lovejoy's straightforward, concise explanations are perfect for beginning gardeners of any age. Get to know your soil, learn about organic gardening methods, and discover why compost is "garden health food." Garden maintenance is tailored to kids with the ten-minute plan and an explorer's kit.

You'll buy the book for the imaginative theme gardens; you and your child will keep coming back to it for the tidbits of advice and activities sprinkled throughout book. Don't plan a child's garden without this book!

Rating:
Summary: Gardening Adventures
Review: Reading this book is like exploring a garden; there are new discoveries every time you look. Much more than a "how-to" garden book, "Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together With Children" takes you and your child on a gardening adventure. Author Sharon Lovejoy weaves garden planning, plant care, nature explorations, science, art, and storytelling into creative garden themes.

For example, the Moon Garden features fragrant, luminous flowers twining around a pole tent. Sit in the tent at night to discover that "fragrance is the color of night." Along the way, learn which animals are active at night, how to tell the temperature by listening to crickets, and how to attract moths with homemade moth broth. At the end of the season, hold a seed-saving party.

In the Zuni Waffle Garden, "dig into the ancient traditions of Native American gardeners and harvest some of their best ideas for your own backyard." Learn about waxing and waning moon cycles, plant the "Three Sisters of Life" like the Iroquois, and sing a traditional Indian song to your plants. Finish off the season with a harvest celebration by making Indian corn jewelry and cornstalk animals.

The author's enchanting watercolors are a perfect match to the text, and even children who cannot read will enjoy looking at the colorful garden images.

In Gardening Basics, Lovejoy's straightforward, concise explanations are perfect for beginning gardeners of any age. Get to know your soil, learn about organic gardening methods, and discover why compost is "garden health food." Garden maintenance is tailored to kids with the ten-minute plan and an explorer's kit.

You'll buy the book for the imaginative theme gardens; you and your child will keep coming back to it for the tidbits of advice and activities sprinkled throughout book. Don't plan a child's garden without this book!

Rating:
Summary: Easy theme gardens, crafts, natural history, and resources.
Review: Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots is a natural progression or outgrowth from my first two books, Sunflower Houses: Garden Discoveries for Children of All Ages and Hollyhock Days: Garden Adventures for the Young at Heart.

I specifically illustrated this book with hundreds of tiny watercolors of animals, plants, and people that I thought would please children. I remember how my son Noah loved to sit in the wing chair with me and look and point to the illustrations in his books. I wanted the children to see and connect with the visual part of the book, and the grown-ups to read and utilize the projects and ideas. I also wrote short, child-like poems for adults to read aloud to the kids.

Rating:
Summary: A magical gardening experience
Review: Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots is a delightful collection of gardening projects and personal experience. Ms. Lovejoy's incredible book not only educates -- it inspires you. It makes you want to get out into the garden and have fun. It's the perfect book for kids and adults. Highly recommend it for anyone who has a child in his/her life -- or for anyone who still has the child within them. Especially wonderful are the illustrations. What a magical book!

Rating:
Summary: Rediscover the joy of playing in the dirt
Review: Sharon Lovejoy probably wasn't the very first gardener to think of creating fairy gardens, pizza gardens, sunflower houses and flower mazes; but I'll give her credit for introducing them to the gardening public like no one else had before or since.

ROOTS, SHOOTS, BUCKETS AND BOOTS is a delightful introduction to gardening for children and the people who cherish them. The book is grounded on the idea that gardening should be shared with kids at a young age, the better to nurture a lifetime of healthy pleasure and respect for nature: therefore, learning how to grow things should be a fun experience, without a lot of restrictions, rules and long waiting to see results. Every project is scaled for children -- with a little help from parents - to be quick, do-able and fun.

Parents will appreciate that the theme gardens in RSB&B will not send them running to the local garden center to charge up a small fortune in tools and materials. In keeping with organic horticultural practices, the author explains simple, homemade composting techniques and recipes to build soil and feed plants. Whenever possible, readers are encouraged to use found objects around the house and garage for cultivating and planting: she gives "permission" to dig and work the soil with spoons and forks, pot up potatoes in colanders and herb gardens in old gardening boots, and find new purpose for rusty old wagons as movable feasts of annual flowers.

Kids can't help but learn quite a bit from their experiences in sowing and growing. The author opens up a world of wonderment that tantalizes kids to learn from the changes and growth taking place. She subtly encourages kids to watch for all the insect and animal life their gardens will attract. RSB&B is densely packed with fun factoids like, "Run your fingers over the pumpkin vines. Farmers use them to protect the plots of other crops" and "If you like the taste of licorice, you won't be able to pass your fennel without nibbling. Fennel is called the weight-watcher's herb because it satisfies an appetite."

Designed with humor and illustrated with charm, RSB&B will prompt people of all ages to rediscover why they love playing outside in the sun, fresh air and dirt.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful, user-friendly handbook for gardening with kids!
Review: Sharon Lovejoy's new book, Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots is another treasure for adults and children alike. The water color illustrations are just the enticement one needs to try new garden projects! Great resource for parents, teachers and anyone who loves to be outdoors with children!

Rating:
Summary: So you want a fun backyard for your children...
Review: then this is the book for you! We just bought a house with lots of backyard and I was looking for a book to help me turn some of it into fun space for our 2 girls where they can do some gardening of their own. This book has great ideas for both big and small spaces. A lot of the ideas can be used in part, and it has definitely turned on the "creative juices" in our heads. The sunflower house alone is AWSOME,and worth purchasing the book just to get that plan! Moms and Dads will enjoy spending time in it as much as the kids!

Great for beginning gardeners to the seasoned gardeners - helps you plan your garden from start to finish with tips on how to get your kids involved and enjoying it. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: So you want a fun backyard for your children...
Review: then this is the book for you! We just bought a house with lots of backyard and I was looking for a book to help me turn some of it into fun space for our 2 girls where they can do some gardening of their own. This book has great ideas for both big and small spaces. A lot of the ideas can be used in part, and it has definitely turned on the "creative juices" in our heads. The sunflower house alone is AWSOME,and worth purchasing the book just to get that plan! Moms and Dads will enjoy spending time in it as much as the kids!

Great for beginning gardeners to the seasoned gardeners - helps you plan your garden from start to finish with tips on how to get your kids involved and enjoying it. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: New ideas for kid-friendly gardens
Review: This book does more than just suggest seeds to plant or tools to buy--it's full of the coolest garden designs I've ever seen that are focused on kid fun. Lovejoy presents a large number of gardens based around a central theme- some edible with veggies and herbs, some aimed more at flowers. Each theme includes a list of plants for different zones and a garden-related project or two that brings new dimensions to history, nutrition, science, cooking, ecology or art for your kids. Several of them revolve around a "tent" frame that needs a couple of adults to build it; it's sort of like a teepee, but with more supports. Once the frame is built, you can add a variety of different vines to create anything from a "night garden" tent of scented white flowers to a thickly-screened shade tent for hot summer days. Since the frame can be covered with annuals, you can plan a different garden each year. There's ideas for traditional knot gardens, proper composting, flowers for craft activities, and unusual and easy-to-grow edibles, and it's easily possible to combine a couple of Lovejoy's themes to creat your own. Lots of basics on plant care are included--even if you've never really gardened before, you can handle these layouts if you don't mind getting dirty. You also don't have to have a huge yard to apply some of these ideas; some of the projects can even happen in balcony containers. It's a great gift for your own kids or any other family you know who likes to have fun outside, and by far the best kid gardening book I've ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional!
Review: This book has both big and small scale projects for gardening. The projects not only are suitable for adults to do with children, but there are plenty of projects that older children could do alone, if provided with the correct materials.
This book has really cool gardening ideas, adults without children will enjoy this book as well.
Buy this book; you will NOT be disappointed (unless you let the book sit on a shelf)!