Nowadays, school gardening programmes have become increasingly popular. There are so many benefits in it. Gardening is a good way to improve physical activity and nutritional habits in children. It also provides kids with so many skills to help with their development, including: increasing their knowledge about plant science, developing their problem solving and analytical skills.

Parents and caregivers are also essential to children’s healthy development. Parents’ encouragement, guidance and involvement play an important role for children to do well in both school and life. Research shows that the amount of time parents invest in their children is directly related to their children’s well being and it is also a strong indicator of parents’ work-family balance.

My target audience for this app are parents who are interested in creating some learning opportunities and do some fun gardening activities with their kids at home. With the app, I hope to provide a range of activities for families to learn together which can further improve communication across generations and build closer relationships.

In order to best understand my target audience and their needs, I created and conducted a user survey to collect people’s opinions. The purpose of this survey was to determine what features and content to include and what not to include in the app. And I’m also interested in learning more about parents’ gardening experience with kids, their barriers, interests, and go-to resources. I wonder what parents are interested in knowing, what kind of knowledge and skills are necessary for learners to develop, and what kind of support they might need.

• Parents use multiple websites and gardening apps which makes them toggle back and forth among different learning systems

• The common denominator that stops parents from starting a garden is the lack of gardening knowledge

• Parents seem to struggle with budgeting time for work-family balance and for devoting time to their family without burning out or feeling overwhelmed