Rocks, Dirt, Worms & Weeds

March 5, 2012
This new guide for children from landscape designer and author Hutton (Inside Out: The Art and Craft of Home Landscaping) suffers because it tries to do too much. It’s best when presenting simple activities and crafts, such as growing popcorn or making rain gauges. A whole book of these engaging and easy-to-execute activities would have been a real resource to parents trying to share their love of the garden with children. Unfortunately, beyond these projects, the book is chaotic, incomplete, and unsure of its audience. Rather than focusing on small-scale gardening with easy-to-cultivate, child-pleasing plants, the author provides scattered ecology lessons, random plant listings, hard-to-follow cultivation advice, and a visually uneven mix of photos and artwork. This guide is a missed opportunity to introduce children to the joys of gardening. Full-color photos and illus. throughout.