Gardening with Teenagers

A Gardening  Revival!

It’s a fact; there is an extreme decline in the popularity of gardening.
People have less free time, they live in much smaller spaces, vegetables are available all year round and the gardening population is mostly from the baby boomer generation (people born 1946 to 1964). That means that unless I, as a guerilla gardener do something to prevent it I will be participating in what is known as an old person’s hobby!
In order to revive interest in gardening, guerilla gardeners everywhere must focus on the younger generation because unless we improve the image of gardening it could be a lost cause/art form.
It’s really easy to get small children on board with gardening, but most teenagers seem to think that gardening is a “lame old people hobby”.
To help improve the image of gardening and get teenagers involved you must understand that most teenagers rebel against authority and seek to embrace counterculture. It’s a challenge to make gardening as significant and interesting as a teenage celebrity scandal, but here are a few ideas to try:

A Goth Garden
If your teenager walks around looking like a member of the Adams family, and wears nothing but black all the time then don’t fight it, embrace their dark side. Leave a gardening article about creating a Goth Garden lying around (it is better if they think this is their idea, not yours) and give them a gargoyle (or some other creepy garden ornament)  to inspire them to garden. If there is absolutely no way to pry them outside into the light of day then an indoor carnivorous house plant such as a Venus flytrap just might be the ticket to get them interested in gardening.

Moss Graffiti and Seed Bombing
Graffiti is the ultimate counterculture art and moss graffiti brings whole new meaning to the term going green. If you have a cement wall or fence this is the end all to be all for that creative teenager who thinks that gardening is lame. As for seed bombing, well gardening doesn’t get much more rebellious than that!

The “Rock Star” Garden
The slogan for this line of plants is “Cool Plants for Rock Gardens” and their “spokesperson” is a edgy cement, sunglass wearing, Easter Island looking dude named “Cliff”.  The “Rock Star” collection of plants do not require a whole lot of attention or fussing and need very little water. Low maintenance is the key!
These plants are a good choice for any teenage garden because after all, teenagers have things to do, people to see, places to go and don’t want to spend all their time taking care of a garden.

A Fashionista Garden
So your teenage daughter is a little fashionista. For those of you who are not in the know these are the girls who love designer clothes, shoes and handbags. A shoe garden, a purse planter, or a garden with a designer logo spelled out in plants will make the statement that these girls are looking for. I would suggest an anti-fashionista scarecrow contest but lets face it they would just dress it in your clothes.

Baja 1000 Race Track Garden
The granddaddy of all desert races is the Baja 1000. Only half of the racers will finish this incredible test of endurance where mechanical failures and vehicle flip-overs are all part of the ride. Mention within teenage hearing to a friend that you are thinking of recreating this desert race in your garden by making a track of pea gravel, planting some desert like plants (like the Rock Star collection), and adding some sand pits. Then bring some pea gravel home, buy a couple of remote controlled cars and leave them where they will be seen daily. Teenagers (and possibly some husband type persons) will be begging/thinking  of ways to convince you to let them be involved in this garden project.

The Techie Garden
It seems almost impossible to pry teenagers away from their smartphones, tablets and computers but if you still want to get them on board with gardening, well there’s an app for that!
How about a planter that can monitor a plant’s health and send a message to a smartphone that it needs water, or a robotic planter that will seek the sun all on it’s own, or even a  Garden Watch Camera that will document the blossoming of your garden with beautiful time lapse technology. These are just of some of the high-tech garden gadgets that exist and can provide teenagers the opportunity to garden in a more technological way. As a Guerilla Gardener you can help bring gardening into the new millennium by sending/emailing/twittering/facebooking a teenager near you a link to the Geeks Guide to a Green Thumb. If you are still determined to get a teenager involved in gardening then buy some cool garden techie stuff for yourself and get them to set it up and show you how the software works. This is a win/win situation as teenagers love showing off technically for the “old folks” and if you don’t let on that you’re technically capable, it will be like getting a free tech call and some free software lessons too!

Guerilla Gardeners Unite!

Make your next adventure about finding a teenager and start your own Gardening Revival,
because after all nothing could be more humiliating than having an old person’s hobby and you might learn something yourself!

Brenda Dyck
A Guerilla Gardener on an Adventure!