A Tu B’Shevat Garden for You and Your Children

by Rebecca Klempner

A few years ago, while expecting my first daughter, I craved flowers.

Most normal women—and I’ve never been “normal”—experience cravings for particular foods while pregnant. Popular favorites of the pregnant lady include chocolate, red meat, and ice cream. My husband once encountered a pregnant woman enjoying jalapeno peppers with hot fudge.

At the beginning of my second trimester, just as I was wrapping up a particularly nasty bout of morning sickness, I started to dream obsessively about gardens. These gardens were inevitably filled with vivid flowers. Soon these fantasies crossed over into my daytime hours, as well. I dragged my family on outings to botanical gardens, and my husband paid an unusual number of visits to the neighborhood florist. (She took pity on my husband at a certain point and sent him home with old catalogs. I cut them up and made a mural in my bedroom. Nearly four years later, it’s still there!).

By Tu B’Shevat, I was spending an astonishing number of hours daydreaming about gardens, and I had to do something about it. We lived (and still live) in a small apartment in L.A. where we shared a perfectly heinous backyard with the other tenants. Before we moved in, it was paved over almost in its entirety. This patio was mostly used as a dumping ground for the old, broken-down furniture of tenants or former tenants.

How would I be able to rejuvenate this urban nightmare? I bought several pots, potting soil, and seeds. I cleared most of the trash heap out back and used a few concrete blocks as planters. With my husband’s help, I reclaimed the single flower bed from the overgrown aloes and vines that had intruded from the other side of the fence.

It sounds like a lot of work, but my kids were happy helpers. Since then, our family has made a tradition of setting up our garden each Tu B’Shevat.

Of course, Tu B’Shevat is really the birthday of the trees. If you have space, a tree is a wonderful addition to your home garden. Our own family garden is too paved-over for a large tree, but some trees grow well in containers, at least for their initial years. My mother-in-law gave me a beautiful plumeria tree a couple of years ago, descended from one she brought home from a family vacation in Hawaii over twenty years ago. Its flowers are gorgeous and smell divine.

Can’t even squeeze in a small tree? Plant container flowers good for cutting: zinnias, daisies, stocks or cosmos, for example. If it’s too cold in your neck of the words to plant these outside in January, you can often start them indoors.

My absolute favorite way to start our Tu B’shevat garden is to plant sweet peas. They are very easy to grow, smell lovely, and provide bountiful blossoms in many colors from Pesach time through early summer. If you have more space, you can put in sunflowers or rose seedlings, which can be similarly dazzling. And I can’t forget poppies! In California, if you plant the native poppies early enough, you’ll be able to cut flowers from April to June.

While in season, you can use your own flowers on the Shabbos table, and they make great hostess gifts, as well. Last year, I gave my eldest son’s teachers forget-me-nots on the last day of school. How nice a message is that?

My husband, the practical one, appreciates that he now rarely has to pay the florist for our flowers. However, he really wants me to grow vegetables, too. Lucky for him, spring is also the season for lettuces, spinaches, onions, squashes, and many other vegetables. Strawberries should also be planted early in the springtime. I learned that the hard way: I planted them too late last year. We got three strawberries, then all the plants started sending shoots out. No more berries for us for the rest of the year. Peas and beans are less glamorous to grow, but are extremely easy to manage, start quickly, have pretty leaves and flowers (fava beans’ are particularly striking), and enhance the soil.

Kids love to participate in many gardening activities: picking out the types of plants and seeds at the store, pouring soil into pots, digging out weeds, and watering. It also teaches them patience—first you work, then you wait for the benefits. And sometimes things go wrong (like when opossums decapitated our sunflowers overnight), but that’s part of the learning experience.

Moms might be interested to know that studies have shown that kids who garden also eat more produce. My husband grew up eating the fruits and vegetables from his own yard. My mother-in-law has always been generous with her own garden-grown produce, and now her grandkids love eating “Savta’s apples” and “Savta’s tangerines” best of all.

If the home garden seems too much for you, Tu B’Shevat is the perfect time to pull out some books about trees or gardening. Some Jewish books appropriate to the season for children include The Little Leaf, Dear Tree, Sammy Spider’s First Tu B’Shevat, Grandpa and Me on Tu B’Shevat, and It’s Tu B’Shevat. Secular books include Linnea’s Garden, A Tree is Nice, and Planting a Rainbow.

Whether you plant a real garden this Tu B’Shevat (indoors or out) or just an imaginary one, chag Sameach, everyone!

And now, it’s time for me to head out for the nursery. I’d better ask my kids if we should plant pink or red sweet peas this year…