There's something clearly amiss when a parent or two is puttering outside for hours in the glorious sunshine, while the kids are loafing indoors. It can be hard enough to get a kid outside - imagine trying to coax your Wii-addicted tween to help out in the garden. While different tactics work for different ages and personality types, gardening experts say the key is starting small. And a new PBS cable TV show is taking that literally, trying to get the littlest toddlers hooked on growing gardens.
You read that right - a television show is trying to get kids outside. The animated "Fifi and the Flowertots" started airing in mid-January on the children's channel PBS Kids Sprout. Fifi is a little girl-flower who lives in a tiny world. She has friends as tiny as she is, and they like to garden. (That's organic gardening, mind you.) "It's very fresh, very gentle ... a very clean, healthy lifestyle with lots of laughter and some tears," says the show's London-based executive producer, Greg Lynn. "Fifi" will teach young children a few particulars about gardening, although the show isn't fixated exclusively on the subject. Fifi is supposedly an expert gardener, and one of her best friends is "Mo," her compost-powered mower, who helps her tend and harvest her garden. But let's say you can drag your kid away from the TV. What's next? You'd think Julie Stricker's daughter, Edie, 4-1/2, was born with a gardening "gene," but really, Stricker simply has given Edie the freedom to gradually fall in love with the garden. And she has.
You read that right - a television show is trying to get kids outside. The animated "Fifi and the Flowertots" started airing in mid-January on the children's channel PBS Kids Sprout. Fifi is a little girl-flower who lives in a tiny world. She has friends as tiny as she is, and they like to garden. (That's organic gardening, mind you.) "It's very fresh, very gentle ... a very clean, healthy lifestyle with lots of laughter and some tears," says the show's London-based executive producer, Greg Lynn. "Fifi" will teach young children a few particulars about gardening, although the show isn't fixated exclusively on the subject. Fifi is supposedly an expert gardener, and one of her best friends is "Mo," her compost-powered mower, who helps her tend and harvest her garden. But let's say you can drag your kid away from the TV. What's next? You'd think Julie Stricker's daughter, Edie, 4-1/2, was born with a gardening "gene," but really, Stricker simply has given Edie the freedom to gradually fall in love with the garden. And she has.
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