10 Parents and Kids Whose Gardens Grew Happiness at Home, From a Rented Backyard to an Autumn Orchard

After the divorce, my ex kept the house and the garden I’d grown for 10 years. The kids and I got a rental with cracked clay for a backyard. “Even weeds won’t stay with you,” the landlord’s wife laughed from her porch next door. We planted tomatoes anyway, mostly because my kids needed something to do besides watching me unpack.

In May, my son’s shovel hit a rusted box under the old shed. My knees hit the mud. Inside was a coffee can of seed packets, hand-labeled “Brookfield, 1981,” and a folded letter: I planted this yard the year I left my husband with two kids and nothing. If you found this, you’re starting over too. These grow in anything.

It was signed by Ruth, the landlord’s mother. I walked the letter next door. The landlord’s wife read it twice and didn’t say a word. The next Saturday, she showed up with a wheelbarrow of compost and two pairs of her own kids’ old garden gloves. Ruth’s tomatoes came up in June, and we shared them with half the street. I’ve saved the seeds for whoever rents this place after us.

My 3-year-old’s only job in the garden was the watering can, and he took it seriously: three times a day, every plant, including the ones that didn’t need it. Our neighbor leaned on the fence and said, “You know he’s drowning those, right?” I knew. I let him anyway.

Then came a heat wave in July. The neighbor’s beds wilted, and ours didn’t. Our zucchini doubled in size in four days, and my son stood next to it with his mouth open like he’d done magic. Plenty of gardeners will tell you never to let a toddler near the hose. I’d tell them to meet mine.

My daughter, 7, planted a row of sunflower seeds along our garage in April and made me promise to measure her against them every Sunday. My mother-in-law watched the first measuring session and said, “You’re letting her ruin the only sunny wall you have.”

By July the sunflowers were taller than my daughter. By August they were taller than me. The garage wall is now covered in pencil marks and dates, and my mother-in-law asked if she could add her own grandkids’ heights next summer. Would you have given up the sunny wall?

When my son was 15, I made him weed the vegetable beds every Saturday after he missed curfew twice. He sulked through every minute and told me gardening was “something old people do so they have something to complain about.” I figured that was the end of it.

He’s 19 now and away at college. Last week he sent me a photo of a basil plant on his dorm windowsill and asked how often he should water it. Was the punishment fair, or did it only work by accident? I’m still not sure, and I’m not asking him.

My father taught my son to grow a giant pumpkin this year, the kind where you pinch off everything but one fruit per vine. At a family barbecue, my brother laughed, “Dad never had time to teach us anything, but sure, now he’s a pumpkin coach.” Dad heard it and didn’t argue.

In October, the pumpkin weighed 212 pounds, and my son insisted Grandpa’s name go on the entry card next to his. My brother came over with his kids to help load it onto the trailer. Some say it’s never too late to become the dad you weren’t. Others say it’s just easier with grandkids. Which is it?

I live in a third-floor apartment, so my garden is a balcony: four buckets of peppers and an herb box my daughter painted purple. When my aunt visited, she looked out and said, “Playing farmer in a flowerpot. Cute.” My daughter heard every word.

That fall, our building held a potluck, and her pepper salsa ran out first. The next week, three neighbors knocked on our door asking for seedlings. A garden doesn’t need a yard. Maybe it just needs an eight-year-old who refuses to be called cute.

My stepdaughter, 13, barely spoke to me for most of the first year. She wasn’t rude, just silent. In October, I asked if she’d help me plant garlic, mostly because I didn’t know what else to ask. She shrugged and came outside.

Garlic goes in one clove at a time, pointy side up, and it’s slow, boring work. Somewhere around clove 40, she asked why it had to be planted before winter. I explained. She asked another question. We planted 120 cloves, and she talked through the last 80. My wife says I’m reading too much into a garlic bed. Am I?

We replaced half our front lawn with wildflowers so the kids could watch the bees. Within a month, the HOA sent a letter about “unkempt landscaping.” My kids made laminated signs that said “Bee Hotel: Do Not Mow” and staked them along the edge. The HOA president came by to inspect, bringing her granddaughter, who ran straight into the flowers looking for bees.

Two weeks later, the HOA president asked my kids for a bag of seeds for her own yard. The letter was never mentioned again. Rules are rules, some neighbors will say. Were they wrong this time?