A Garden Journal App for Kids That Gets Them Outside

The short version: The best garden app for a kid is one that sends them back outside. Percy is a garden journal they can just talk to: they say what they notice and photograph what they find, and it remembers it all with the date, so the season becomes a record in their own words. Percy accounts are for grown-ups; kids use it on your phone, with you nearby.

Somewhere right now, a kid is watering a pretend carrot. They tap the screen, the carrot grows, coins fall out of the sky, and a greenhouse unlocks. They're very good at it. They have amassed a great many coins.

Thirty feet away, past a window they haven't looked out of, there is an actual carrot.

I don't blame the game. It does its job, and its job is to keep a kid looking at the game, growing an endless crop of pixel carrots that seem to pay handsomely.

But a real garden has advantages no amount of sky coins can buy. Carrots come up forked like a tiny pair of pants. Worms are longer than anyone expected. The dirt is real dirt, it ends up under the fingernails, and everyone survives.

A game can hand a kid a carrot. A garden makes them wait for one, which is the better lesson. They plant a seed in April. It becomes a tomato in July. To a seven-year-old, that's roughly a geological age. They learn that some things can't be rushed. And that a vegetable they grew themselves, despite hating vegetables, deserves a serious look before they refuse to eat it outright.

Gardening teaches them to look closely. Kids already do this better than adults, who could also use a reminder to look up and out the window from time to time. A garden rewards the habit daily, because something is always different. A flower on Tuesday is a bean on Friday. It's amazing. There should be sky coins.

So if you're shopping for a gardening app for kids, my suggestion is a little backwards. Pick the one that points them at the real garden.

How kids can use Percy as a garden journal

Percy is the garden journal that remembers, and you just talk to it. Your kid holds a button like a walkie-talkie and says whatever they see. They don't have to type or spell, which helps when your gardener is five and still negotiating with the letter S. They say, "The pumpkin is turning orange." Percy plays it back, they tap to confirm (or fix it if Percy heard "porcupine," which would be a concerning color for a porcupine), and the thing they noticed gets saved in the Nest. Percy takes every observation and assembles it into a record of the season.

It takes about ten seconds, and they can do it standing right next to the pumpkin.

Who came to visit

Kids notice the visitors first. A bumblebee lands on the zinnia and gets reported. A caterpillar shows up in a color that looks like a manufacturing error and gets reported too. Toads and birds follow (and once, at our house, a baby deer in the hydrangeas). Each thing they notice goes into the journal with up to three photos. And Percy automatically builds a jealousy-inducing garden record, organized by plant and tagged with the date and weather.

By August they will have told Percy all about your garden. They'll remember the order of events better than you do. By the end of the season, you're left with the Migration Report: a keepsake of your season in the garden, captured through their eyes, in their own words. It's worth more than all the sky coins in the world.

What's that?

Every garden with a child in it produces the question "what's that?" about forty times an afternoon. And the adult answer is often "a weed? Maybe a flower?"

Percy can look at a photo of a plant and tell you what it is. They take the picture, discover the name, and the name goes into the garden journal instead of evaporating by snack time. When they ask next spring about the purple thingy, the answer will already be written down.

A name isn't permission to touch or taste, though. Unknown berries and mushrooms stay a grown-up question.

A few things that help

Let them hold the phone for the garden walk. It's their job for the next ten minutes. Ask one question, "What's different today?" If they say the squash looks angry, let Percy write down angry. You can add the powdery mildew later.

When they tell Percy that next year they want to grow a watermelon the size of a dog, Percy saves that too, in Someday (Percy's shelf for maybe-next-year ideas). It'll be there in March, when you can settle exactly what breed of dog we're talking about.

Ask what's different today. They'll tell you.

The tablet garden will still be there when it rains.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my kids interested in gardening? Give them a job that's about noticing, not chores. Hand them the phone for a ten-minute garden walk, ask "What's different today?", and let them report what they find. Kids already notice more than adults; they just need somewhere to put it.

Is there a garden journal app for kids? Percy works well as one, even though it wasn't built just for kids. They don't have to type or spell: they say what they see, and Percy keeps it with the date. For more options, here are the best gardening apps for kids.

Can kids use Percy? Yes, with you. Percy accounts are for grown-ups, and kids use it on your phone, with you nearby.