A Child's Secret Garden: Grow a Backyard Hideaway

With a pile of long sticks, $5 worth of seeds and a 5-foot-square plot of fertile earth, you and your children can work together to create a midsummer hideaway. No prior experience is necessary.

When I first planted this garden with my children, it became a secret refuge, a place for hide-and-seek that even fooled our dog, and an object of wonder as tiny seeds were transformed into plants 9 feet tall or 10 feet wide. In the end, it provided food for the table, pumpkins for the front porch and a harvest ground for squirrels.

Preschoolers can plant and tend the garden as long as an adult has prepared the ground with fertilizer and/or compost. Children 6 and older can be given a yardstick to place seeds at correct distances and can help thin seedlings. (But if not properly supervised, preschoolers will sow 12 seeds per square inch and then can’t bear to thin baby plants.)

Plant your seeds in May, a month or two after cool-weather crops such as peas and lettuce.

Place three to six 8- to 10-foot poles in a 5-foot diameter circle and tie them together at the top. My children couldn’t imagine why we’d need to go so high, but the tall stakes became a lesson in believing that great things can come from tiny beginnings.

Plant several scarlet runner beans at the base of each pole. These will grow into a thick net of vines with vivid scarlet blooms. The first time we planted four seeds per pole. Unexpectedly, they all thrived and overwhelmed the hedge of corn around our teepee. Now we plant only two seeds per pole.

If you’re going to eat the whole beans, harvest them when they’re young and tender. If you want to see how long they’ll get, leave them on the vines. Our longest bean pod was 11.5 inches. If you let them get this big, the pods will be tough, but you can eat the deep purple beans inside.

You can substitute Kentucky Blue or any other pole bean for the scarlet runners, but you’ll miss the bright flowers. Don’t use peas because this cool-weather crop will be dead and brown by the time the rest of your midsummer garden grows. Heavenly Blue morning glories are a tall, climbing, non-vegetable alternative.

In the center of the teepee, plant two or three sunflower seeds to grow out of the top. My children couldn’t resist planting a few extra seeds. You’ll have to be ruthless and thin some seedlings to allow others to grow to full height. (I was a coward and did it when my children weren’t looking.)