24 Wonderful Gardening Books for Kids
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It’s almost spring! Are you excited to start a garden with your kids? Or at least teach your kids about gardening? Then, these gardening books for toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary age kids will be helpful tools as you share your love of nature with your children.
Garden Toys
If your kids don’t have their own play garden toys, I highly recommend them. My kids LOVED their rakes, trowels, and watering cans. (Which were used in the dirt and in the sandbox.) You can get everything you need in a kit like this set.
Also, many kids (mine included) love making tiny indoor fairy gardens or terrariums. Both are fun indoor garden-growing options. But you can also buy doors and accessories for outdoor fairy gardens. It can get pricey yet even with a few fairy garden toys, it will promote many hours and days of imaginative playtime.
Ready to discover wonderful gardening picture books? Let’s go!
Gardening Books for Kids
The Little Gardener by Jan Gerardi
Lift-the-flaps in this colorful board book to learn the big ideas about gardening — shovel, pail, rake, seeds, and more.
Thank You, Garden written by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Simone Shin
Perfect for spring reading, this is a lyrical celebration of a thriving community garden with diverse characters. The illustrations invite readers into the friendships and community that grow along with the plants. Beautiful.
Lola Plants a Garden written by Anna McQuiinn, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
Lola wants to plant a garden. First, she and mommy check out books about gardening from the library. Then, then pick what they’ll grow and buy seeds. Next, they dig and plant and wait. You’ll love this Lola story as much as the others and get to see the sequential transformation of planning, planting, and growing seed to flower.
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Bold, enticing illustrations plus minimal text share the story of a child and mother planting a color-filled garden. It’s the perfect first gardening book to learn about growing things including the names of flowers, bulbs, and seeds.
Goodnight, Veggies by Diana Murry and Zachariah O’Hora
Soothing rhymes and short alliterative phrases prepare kids to sleep while also introducing them to different vegetables and gardening. Enchanting! Eggplants, cucumbers, yams, beets, and all the garden veggies are ready to sleep.
Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
Can you grow vegetables to make a soup? Learn how to pick the seeds, plant, weed, harvest, wash, chop, and cook soup! A yummy introduction to the concept of farm-to-table, and a great first gardening book.
We Are the Gardeners written by Janna Gains and Kids, illustrated by Julianna Swaney
This is a must-read gardening book, especially when planning and planting your own garden. The story celebrates family, hard work, and persistence as well as actual gardening. Whimsical illustrations throughout perfectly complement this charming story of planting, experiencing challenges, building a fence, and harvesting.
Plant the Tiny Seed by Christie Matheson
Use your imagination as you read and touch, rub, press, shake, clap, and more to help plant a garden. All the seeds need are water, rain, and sunshine to grow and you get to help. An interactive gardening book that your young readers will love!
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt written by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
See what’s happening both above and below ground as a little girl and her grandmother work in the garden from the beginning of the spring planting season until autumn gives way to cold snow. It’s an oversized book with marvelous illustrations and sensory descriptions.
Zinnia’s Flower Garden by Monica Wellington
Zinnia plants flower seeds and then waits and journals while her sprouts grow into flowers. The borders of the pages include information about the parts of a flower as well as the different kinds of flowers in Zinnia’s garden. Later in the fall, Zinnia finds the ripe seeds formed in the flowers which she will save to plant next year.
The Gardener written by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small
You are going to love this gardening book! Lydia Grace Finch helps transform the city with her seeds that grow into beautiful flowers and help her cultivate a rooftop garden.
Miguel’s Community Garden written by JaNay Brown-Wood, illustrated by Samara Hardy
Explore the garden with Miguel in this interactive story while he searches for a sunflower. As you search, learn about plants like artichokes, cherries, mulberries, spinach, and more. Finally, you find a tall flower with yellow petals, a round center, smooth green, and pointy leaves–a sunflower! A delightful, educational introduction to plants in a garden with compare and contrast thinking.
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
When Liam discovers an abandoned garden, he decides to help it grow. As it grows, it spreads its lush green life throughout the dark, gray city.
I Love Strawberries! written by Shannon Anderson, illustrated by Jaclyn Sinquett
This enthusiastic girl is determined to grow strawberries. After she’s successful in persuading her parents, she learns that strawberries are tricky to grow because they cost money, you have to watch out for bird attacks, and you need to pick the berries when they’re ripe. But soon, she’s eating all sorts of strawberry foods and selling the abundance of strawberries to her neighbors.
Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? written by Susan A. Shea, illustrated by Tom Slaughter
Help children think about what is alive and what isn’t. Interactive and playful, this book will get your kids thinking and learning.
Caterpillar and Bean A First Science Storybook written by Martin Jenkins, illustrated by Hannah Tolson
This is the story of a seed wedged in a crack. Watch how the root pushes out the shoots and leaves. This is also the story of a caterpillar who hatches from an egg, eats and eats the leaves of the plant, and turns into a beautiful butterfly. A wonderful nature book for early readers.
Anywhere Farm written by Phyllis Root, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
Where can you plant an anywhere farm? This book explores the many possibilities: in a bucket, a bin, a window, a crate, a cup or a balcony, and more. What can you plant? Who might come to visit? (Think birds and bugs.) And how do you start? You just need one farmer (that’s you,) and one little seed. Perhaps this gardening book will inspire a spring garden or two!
Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth written by Mary McKenna Siddals, illustrated by Ashley Wolff
What a vibrant, essential gardening book! Lyrical, rhythmic text from a to z tells you everything you can use in your compost stew accompanied by beautiful collage art.
And Then It’s Spring written by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead
A young boy and his dog watch the dull landscape and hopefully plant a seed. They watch and wait as the brown finally and slowly becomes green.
Yucky Worms by Vivian French, illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg
Gardeners love worms and this book will share why with facts on worms and how they help gardens. An absolute delight!
Too Many Pumpkins written by Linda White, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
Rebecca loves to garden but she hates pumpkins. So when a pumpkin falls off a truck near her yard, she shovels dirt over it and forgets it. Until…the pumpkin seeds sprout up and pumpkins take over her garden. She realizes that pumpkins and pumpkin recipes can spread joy through her community.
Rachel’s Day in the Garden: A Kids Yoga Spring Colors Book written by Giselle Shardlow of Kids Yoga Stories, illustrated by Hazel Quintanilla
This sweet picture book follows Rachel and her dog, Sammy, from waking up on a rainy day in the garden. As she looks for signs of spring, readers can try the poses in the circled insets. The narrative has a perfect text-to-picture ratio and multi-media collage artwork is absolutely amazing. The book ends with four pages that have keywords, poses, and illustrations of how to do each.
The Fairy Garden written by Georgia Buckthorn, illustrated by Isabella Mazzanti
A little girl named Mimi wants to make a fairy garden and so she pulls the weeds and sprays bug spray. After days pass and no fairies come to her garden, they explain that the bug spray hurts them and they also prefer weeds and leaves. Mimi changes her approach and makes a welcoming, safe space for the fairies that they love, without sprays and with plenty of weeds.
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