Children’s books guaranteed to get little green fingers itching

Can children’s storybooks sow the seeds of a lifetime’s love of gardening, while helping to shape a sense of environmental responsibility? Like many others, I like to think so.

An obvious example is The Lorax by Dr Seuss, first published in 1971, a cautionary rhyming tale about the vulnerability of the natural landscape and its ecosystems when confronted with the interests of big business and human indifference. Given its huge popularity today, it is interesting to note that the book's strong environmental theme wasn't initially popular with readers. Instead it wasn't until the 1980s and the rise of the environmental movement that the message of The Lorax would properly take root.

Seuss's book is one of a clutch of children's classics that should be on the bookshelves of any young child. Others include The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle (also author of the much-loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Published in 1970, it tells the story of one seed's dangerous windborne journey over high mountains and across vast oceans until it finally drops onto fertile ground, where it grows into a giant flower ('taller than the houses, taller than the trees") that in turn sets seed, continuing the cycle of life.

A classic in the making is Footpath Flowers by the poet JonArno Lawson. Only published last year, this exquisitely illustrated, award-winning picture book tells the story of a little girl who is instinctively attuned to the random, ephemeral beauty of the natural world – its weeds, its wildflowers, its wildlife – in a way that many adults have forgotten to be.

Also published last year is The Little Gardener by Emily Hughes, the story of a garden that "meant everything" to its miniature gardener. Beautifully illustrated by the author (the New York Times described her drawings as a "tangle of Gauguin and Rousseau and botanical journals"), it paints a picture of a world where nature is exciting, unpredictable and transformative.

Hidden mysteries

Worthy of a place on that same bookshelf is

The Curious Garden

by

Peter Brown

(2009). Surely inspired in part by New York’s High Line, it’s the story of a little boy who happens upon a door that leads up to an abandoned railway line, where he find a forgotten garden that he tends lovingly.

Which reminds me of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, an enduring classic and a book that I reckon nourished my own particular lifelong love of walled gardens.

This is a story for slightly older readers, as is the wonderful Lob by the English author Linda Newbery, published in 2010. Based on the enduring legend of the 'Green Man' (a legend common to many cultures), Newbery's tale of Lucy, her green-fingered Grandfather Will and the mysterious green man who lives at the bottom of his garden, captures the strangely beguiling magic of gardening in a way that's unforgettable.