Best Picture Books For Kids About Growing a Garden
Do you plan to have a garden this summer? Bring your kids along with you! They will learn so much as they plant, water, and harvest the flowers and vegetables. These children’s books will inspire you with gardening ideas you may want to try with your kids.
We have all been anticipating the wonderful transformations that spring and summer bring, and now it is finally here! As we finish our school year, we are also preparing to plant a garden.
Our young gardeners are ready to start planting. We like to give our kids a little section of their own garden so they can plant whatever they wish. Our preschoolers who are still learning about gardening tag along and help while we water and weed in the garden.
Gardening is an activity that (for our household) gets the whole family involved and excited about the plants that will soon produce vegetables.
These are some of our favorite books about gardening!
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The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
This picture book follows the life cycles of a seed. It begins in autumn as the wind blows the flower seeds into the air. The seed lands in a few places where it cannot grow like the icy mountains and the hot, dry desert. At last it lands on the earth and snow covers it during winter. Finally, spring arrives and the tiny seed begins to grow! It shoots its roots down in the soil as it also pushes up through the ground to the sun above. Next, it grows beside bigger plants, but slowly, little by little, it becomes a large plant with a beautiful flower. Finally, it grows as tall as a house!
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Hardcover Book
- Carle, Eric (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 36 Pages – 03/10/2009 (Publication Date) – Little Simon (Publisher)
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Every year the main character and her mother order many different varieties of flower seeds from the magazines. Once the flowers are full-grown, they display the colors of the rainbow. Roses for red, poppies for orange, continuing through the rainbow colors, with all the beautiful flowers in their garden.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Ehlert, Lois (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 40 Pages – 12/10/2013 (Publication Date) – Clarion Books (Publisher)
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
Gail Gibbons writes in this garden book about the different sizes of seeds and how each seed turns into the plant from which it came. The book illustrates the diagram of a flower in details that are easy for kids to understand. Birds and insects are a part of the growth of these plants, as they spread the pollen around from flower to flower.
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Gibbons, Gail (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 01/01/1991 (Publication Date) – Holiday House (Publisher)
The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons
This picture book is a great way to teach your kids different aspects about vegetables. Gail Gibbons writes about the perennials and annuals, different shapes and sizes of vegetables, and then goes through the plants in each of the eight groups of vegetables: stems, roots, fruits, flowers, leaves, bulb, tuber, and pod.
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Gibbons, Gail (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 01/02/2008 (Publication Date) – Holiday House (Publisher)
Mortimer’s First Garden by Karma Wilson
Mortimer the Mouse is tired of the plain brown that covers the ground. As he nibbles on the shells of his sunflower seeds, he hears some people talking about planting a garden, making it green. Mortimer is immediately intrigued and plants his last sunflower seed. He watches it, watering the ground where the seed is buried. It slowly grows out of the ground. Finally, Mortimer comes out to see that the little seed was now a tall sunflower full of seeds!
- Hardcover Book
- Wilson, Karma (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 02/24/2009 (Publication Date) – Margaret K. McElderry Books (Publisher)
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner
Above ground in the garden, a girl and her Nana prepare for the garden they are going to tend in the coming spring. Down in the dirt the insects are preparing the soil, getting it ready for the roots to shoot down and grow. Up in the caretakers plant and tend the garden while below, the insects care for the parts of the plants that are down in the dirt.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Messner, Kate (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 177 Pages – 03/03/2015 (Publication Date) – Chronicle Books LLC (Publisher)
Secrets of the Vegetable Garden by Carron Brown
On every page the reader is asked a question about the garden. If your young readers hold a flashlight behind the page, a secret picture is revealed. This is a fun way to discover the secrets of the garden, while enjoying the special moments reading with your little ones.
- Hardcover Book
- Brown, Carron (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 36 Pages – 01/01/2016 (Publication Date) – Kane Miller Book Pub (Publisher)
Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
A family gets out their gardening tools and seeds, planting each individual seed in its own hole. There is corn, zucchini squash, green bean, carrot seeds, and more vegetable seeds and sprouts. As they are watered and nourished by the sun’s light, the little plants grow and grow, until they are harvested by their gardeners. Finally, they are washed and cut up, and a soup is cooked — a garden soup!
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Ehlert, Lois (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 12/10/2013 (Publication Date) – Clarion Books (Publisher)
The Rose in My Garden by Arnold Lobel
A bee visits a single rose. The bee is followed by a hollyhock that grows above the rose, and soon, even more flowers grow around the rose, creating a beautiful flower garden. This book is written in rhyming, poetic words. The flowers are beautifully illustrated.
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Hardcover Book
- Lobel, Arnold (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 39 Pages – 04/18/1984 (Publication Date) – Greenwillow Books (Publisher)
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
When a little boy plants a carrot seed, his mother, father, and brother all tell him it will never grow. Nevertheless, the little learner continues to water it and pull up the weeds, and as spring grows, so too does the little carrot seed that he planted as he had hoped.
- Krauss, Ruth (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 05/19/2020 (Publication Date) – HarperCollins (Publisher)
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
One of our favorite books! As a young girl, Miss Rumphius dreams of going to places far away as her grandfather once did. She travels the world from the city to great tropical islands, but is not satisfied. When she was young, her grandfather told her that to travel the world was an accomplishment not as great nor as important as “making the world beautiful”. Follow Miss Rumphius in this perfect book as she makes the world beautiful by throwing lupine seeds all about the town. In the next spring season the seeds grow into an amazing array of spring beauty.
- Cooney, Barbara (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 11/06/1985 (Publication Date) – Puffin Books (Publisher)
The Trellis and the Seed by Jan Karon
One of our favorite spring books, these colorful illustrations show the plant growth of a tiny seed as the change of the seasons fades into the lively green of spring. Slowly, the plant crawls up the trellis, as its caretaker carefully tends to it. Watching a single seed grow into something so beautiful will inspire children to plant seeds of their own.
- Karon, Jan (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 05/05/2005 (Publication Date) – Puffin Books (Publisher)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mary Lennox, a little girl who is orphaned, is sent to live with her evasive Uncle and discovers along with her cousin Colin a garden that used to be Colin’s mother’s and is now neglected after her death. Mary, her cousin, and a country boy named Dickinson secretly bring new life back into the garden, restoring it to its original beauty and tranquility.
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 384 Pages – 12/21/2010 (Publication Date) – HarperCollins (Publisher)
My Garden by Kevin Henkes
As a little girl helps her mother weed and water the garden, she thinks about having her own garden. She imagines that there would be no weeds, and that they would stay alive forever. Sometimes in her garden, other things would grow, like umbrellas and keys. This is a book that your little gardeners will love because the young girl imagines her own fanciful garden.
- Hardcover Book
- Henkes, Kevin (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 40 Pages – 02/23/2010 (Publication Date) – Greenwillow Books (Publisher)
I hope this list of books inspires you and your young gardeners. What recommendations would you add to this list?
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