Collection

Planting Our Poetry Garden

Poetry for Children of All Ages

BY Evalena Lakin

Learning Prompt.jpeg
Art by Sirin Thada.

Welcome to the Poetry Garden! 

Friends of all ages are welcome to explore its tidy rows of treasures – and it may not be like other gardens you’ve seen before.

Here, you’ll find poems planted among the fruits and veggies. Inhale the sweet scent of flower-poems in full bloom. Feel the perfect plumpness of a tomato-poem as you pluck it from the vine. Take a closer look; you may even see some creature-poems crawling among the roots, buzzing around the blossoms, and fluttering between the leaves. What else do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel?

Everything you’ve found is part of the rich ecosystem that makes the Poetry Garden thrive – including us, the gardeners. We tend each plant with care and love; in return, Mother Nature shares her bounty with us.

So come, readers, dig your fingers into the soil and pull a poem from the Earth.

 

In each section, poems are presented in order of increasing reading level
Flowers
  • "See, the grass is full of stars,
    Fallen in their brightness"
    For children of all ages
  • "Down in a green and shady bed,
    A modest violet grew"
    For children of all ages
  • "Welcome children of the Spring,
    In your garbs of green and gold"
    For children ages 10-13
  • "The horns of yellow
    On this plain resound"
    For children ages 10-13
  • "Amber husk
    fluted with gold"
    For children and teens
  • "I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o'er vales and hills"
    For children and teens
  • Animated poem film from HBO's "A Child's Garden of Poetry"
    For children and teens
  • "Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
    Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt"
    For teens and adults
Fruits & Vegetables
  • "I eat my peas with honey;
    I've done it all my life."
    For children of all ages
  • "Take all summer,
    your ember
    from the sun"
    For children of all ages
  • "From blossoms comes
    this brown paper bag of peaches"
    For children and teens ages 10 and up
  • "What vegetable leviathan
    extends beneath the dinner table,"
    For children and teens ages 10 and up
  • "Late in May as the light lengthens
    toward summer the young goldfinches"
    For children and teens
  • "Long before some sleeping folk
    Are thinking to begin"
    For children and teens
  • "Miracle fruit changes the tongue. One bite, 
    and for hours all you eat is sweet."
    For teens and adults
  • "Late August, given heavy rain and sun
    For a full week, the blackberries would ripen."
    For teens and adults
Garden Critters
  • "Brown and furry
    Caterpillar in a hurry"
    For children of all ages
  • "Even with insects—
    some can sing"
    For children of all ages
  • "When the earth is turned in spring
    The worms are fat as anything."
    For children of all ages
  • "Oh, fly,
    you flew
    onto
    my leaf"
    For children of all ages
  • "A mayfly flies
    In May or June."
    For children of all ages
  • "Water nymph, you have
    climbed from the shallows "
    For children of all ages
  • "It's almost May"
    For children of all ages
  • From Poetry Explorers, a series of poetry prompts and crafts activities for young poets and families.
    For children of all ages
On Gardening
  • "As a quiet little seedling
    Lay within its darksome bed"
    For children of all ages
  • "If you find yourself half naked
    and barefoot in the frosty grass"
    For children and teens ages 10 and up
  • "Hybridization, cross-breeding, evolution"
    For teens and adults
  • "My hands are in the dirt, ten fingernails
    black with it"
    For teens and adults
  • From Poetry Explorers, a series of poetry prompts and crafts activities for young poets and families.
    For children of all ages