With spring in full bloom, it’s a wonderful opportunity to teach young ones about nature and the cycle from seedling to growing flowers and plants. Here are a number of charming books that teach some of the beginning concepts of gardening. Appropriate for the preschool years through kindergarten, these delightful books are bound to inspire some home gardening projects and budding green thumbs! Planting a Rainbow This brightly illustrated book is one of my children’s favorite stories. It teaches the basic concepts of planting seeds, bulbs, and plants. The fun part is the walk through all the colors of the rainbow, with various plants and flowers as examples of those colors. Climate change, habitat destruction and declining pollinator populations mean that the future for plant life looks bleaker than ever before. Many of us are also unable to identify, or even notice, the plants that grow around us. A Tree Is a Plant Here’s a wondrous book about trees, explaining that like the smaller plants and flowers that children see, a tree is also a plant – just a really big one. This book looks at the tree’s lifecycle through the four seasons for an overall view.

The Emerald Planet is a serious talking to about why plants must not be ignored.’ I agree with him that plants are grievously overlooked, because no life on earth would exist without them. It’s all either plants or something that eats them and this book basically explains plants’ place in earth’s history. It explains, for example, how the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere came from plants, the role of plants and trees in the carbon cycle and, of course, we all understand that carbon has a role in controlling our climate nowadays. So, if you want to know about that then this is the book. One Bean This easy-to-understand book zooms in and just focuses its attention on one single bean. Here, we’re treated to the narrative of one bean being planted and watched, through its growth cycle, until it’s ready to be eaten.Leif Bersweden has always been fascinated by wild plants. From a young age, his afternoons were spent hunting for and cataloguing the plants in his local area. But it is a landscape that is fast disappearing. Oh Say Can You Seed Learning about plants and concepts like photosynthesis doesn’t have to be daunting – especially when your guide is the Cat in the Hat, with assistants Thing 1 and Thing 2! Going about it as only Dr. Seuss can, Oh Say Can You Seed gives a whimsical approach to learning about plants and pollination. If you’re looking to capture the beauty of wildflowers, take a look at our helpful guide on how to take photos of wildflowers. Wild Flowers by Colour

Do we really think the population will grow that much? Maybe we’ll all be wiped out before it gets that bad.I wish I could... alas I don't even have a comprehensive guide to the plants in my local area! There are some 2K species of tree in the vicinity of Cairns and myriad other plant species, many of which have barely been studied; many of which are no doubt unknown to science.

That’s right. If you put an iron nail in an oxygenless atmosphere it won’t rust, but in ordinary air it will. Planting the Wild Garden Told in more of a story format, this book starts with characters planting seeds. However, those seeds begin to get dispersed, and we’re treated to explanations on how various agents of nature, including wind, rain, and animals, take those seeds into new and unexpected places.I have three of the Australian Rainforest Plants guides by Nan and Hugh Nicholson, which barely even begin to cover the number of species found here. Each guide covers a couple of hundred species. There are some 15K species of flowering plants in the rainforests here, which cover a tiny percentage of the continent; and God only knows how many more species in the other 97% of the continent. Just to cover the 12K species found in Western Australia would require a whole series of hefty volumes, which do not exist to my knowledge. Now a botanist, Leif decides to go on a mission, to explore the plants that Britain and Ireland have to offer and to meet those who spend time searching for them. Over the course of a year, Leif goes on a journey around the UK and Ireland, highlighting the unique plants that grow there, their history and the threats that face them. His journey takes him from the Cornish coast to the pine forests of Scotland - even to the streets of London, proving that nature can be found in the most unexpected places. Along the way, Leif highlights the joy and positivity that can be found through understanding nature and why it is so desperately important to protect our wildflowers. How to Grow a Seed This book follows the path of an acorn that turns into a mighty oak tree. Because of the young ages that the book targets, it provides simple explanations of scientific concepts and eases the child in with beautiful watercolor illustrations.