Give her some decision making power in the garden. For example, give her some catalogues of fall-planted bulbs and let her choose some. Put her name on the order so that a package arrives in the mail for her. Help her plant them and mark where they are planted so that she can look for them to first come up. New gardeners are often surprised how early daffodils start breaking the soil. That could give your daughter several weeks of happy anticipation.

Send her into a nursery now to pick out some annuals. Leave the choice entirely up to her. And show appreciation for her choices, of course.

Grow something dramatic. Broom corn, the grain from which brooms are made, for example. Giant pumpkins. Walking stick cabbage. A sequoia. Bamboo. Dinner plate dahlias. Banana trees (can be cut and wintered indoors), and so on.

Let her have some instant gratification by buying and planting some in-bloom perennials. Encourage her to play around with them on the unprepared ground to find a layout that pleases her. The let her plant it that way....Gotta tell ya--I did this with my 7 year old and a bunch of mums one year. He wanted them in a tiered semi-circle with a plastic dog yard ornament in the center. It was like a little doggie grotto. But now he's 15 and gardens so much that the two of us have territory disputes.

Only rarely would I make a child weed if I really were trying to get them into gardening. I think most kids find weeding extremely boring.

Do you let your child use power tools? A small tiller if you have one? The lawn mower? Electric hedge trimmer, leaf-eater, weedwhacker, etc? Using these things really depends on a child's strength, coordination, attentiveness, and maturity. But they make a job go so fast that there is quick satifaction in a job finished. Think about whether your child is ready for these.

Grow fruit! Melons, especially water melon. Blueberries, plums, peaches, apples, strawberries, whatever.

My daughter is little (4), but she loves having her own garden. Because it is "hers," she is allowed to do anything she wants with it (ie. pick all the flowers to death, etc.) Now when we go to the nursery, she always brings me new plants to put in her garden.

I have some neices about this age who really like to watch HGTV...Trading Spaces and While You Were Out...While You Were Out often does backyard makeovers.

Yard art is also very cool if she likes artsy craftsy stuff...she could make a planter or any number of things.

I am getting my 12 year old son to help me because we are going to start donating to a local food bank. I am starting him out just watering!

In the garden, her own space: I did this with one of my daughters. She has a bird garden. Its a little place all her own. She has her bird houses, she feeds her wild birds there and even grows a little grain to make them holiday sprays. We are hoping to make it more bower like with some lattice for the roses to clammer on and a bench. I think the thing she enjoys the most is that it is her own little private world.

Thanks to all of you for these great suggestions. She expressed some interest last week when I talked about hummingbird feeders and that may be the way to go. She takes a great deal of interest in the birds that visit our garden, and was not happy when we took down a tree that was taking over our front stoop, as the mourning doves liked to nest in it.

when you buy bird seed, you can plant the sunflower seeds straight from the bag (as they are already raw), bonus, the birds will eat seeds directly from the sunflowers during the fall/winter months. When the hummers have all left.