Gardening for Happy Kids: Designing Landscapes That Nurture Wonder

I grew up in Oklahoma and Minnesota. In Oklahoma, we lived on a hill above a creek where I'd play, finding wonder and imagination my office with its acoustic ceiling tiles rarely provides. In Minnesota, I lived on a lake. I never sought the cul-de-sac, front lawn, or even my mother's garden. My most powerful memories are from the margins between sterile lawn and lake — at the bottom of maples and birches creating a cathedral of dappled light, feet washed in leaf dust, snakes, and mushrooms.

For a child, the greatest places of creativity and discovery are in the margins of what adults value most. While these places may seem unpredictable and dangerous to us, they're where kids become human and connected to the world.

In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv explores nature deficit disorder: kids today have far less outdoor play, resulting in lower self-esteem and creativity, inability to think outside the box or work well with others, and physical and psychological issues from ADHD to obesity. Kids need unstructured play in diverse nature with a semblance of the wild and free. How can we create healthy places for developing minds in our landscapes?

1. Hint at a Destination and Create Mystery

Twists and turns, hidden paths, tree-lined alleys, corners hidden by shrubs — these are tailor-made for independent thinking and exploring. Where does that path go? What's over there? Where can I go that no one will find me?

See how to design a garden that flows and intrigues.

2. Add Diverse Textures and Smells

The more color and leaf variety, the stronger the sense of a place where kids connect and explore.

Place lavender, mountain mint, and giant hyssop on path edges so kids brush against them. Plant grasses from low to high among flowers. Mix big and small leaves, green, red, blue, and yellow. Include spiky flowers like Liatris and huge sunflower disks. Plant tall and short flowers.

3. Create Sound

A bubbling fountain or shallow pool rippling in wind draws people through the garden and out of themselves. Who doesn't like to watch and touch water? Add local turtles and you're set!

Our first sensory experiences influence all future ones. If your first profound smell was a juniper shrub at your grandparents' house on the way to Sunday dinner, juniper will always take you back to lazy Sunday afternoons with family. Same for touch, sound, taste, and sight. What sensory triggers bring back strong memories for you?

4. Have a Place to Sit

The best place to sit is among grasses and flowers, or in the dirt. Next best is snuggled into the landscape. Put benches in secluded areas or overlooking expanses. Create a place to reflect, journal, and slow down by paying attention to the now.

5. Add Rocks

Who doesn't like to play with rocks? Smooth like skin or rough like teeth. Pile them up for garden art. Create fences. Build dry streambeds at downspout bases to carry water into the garden. Rocks rock.

6. Foster the Unexpected

Create unique features using art or vertical gardening. Whenever you stoke surprise, you create wonder and expand expectations. Any landscape designer would appreciate this.

7. Welcome Wildlife

Coincidentally, almost all the above attracts wildlife: water, rocks, seclusion, surprise, textured landscapes with varied plants. Use native plants to support local insect and bird food chains, and don't spray pesticides — for nature and your kids.

Deep down, we want to go where kids want to go — not sidewalks or open lawns, but into woods, to pond edges, somewhere cloistered and inspiring that lets us get to our deepest selves and let go of social norms.

A landscape of intrigue, distance, and mystery — filled with elements appealing to all five senses — is the surest way to rediscover ourselves as kids discover themselves. Think about your landscape through younger eyes, and you might create a healthier world for them, yourself, and wildlife.

More: Rediscover Your Inner Child With a Garden Wonderland