Looking forward to sinking your trowel into a new gardening project this year? Why not include a child, neighbor or friend in your endeavor?

From its center in Burlington, Vt., the National Gardening Association has declared April 2005 National Garden Month. Along with a sweeping network of educators, retailers and home gardeners, the association is determined to “transform lives” with their “Give a Garden” campaign. The goal is to bring individuals just like you and communities just like yours together through gardening. A host of gardening businesses, associations and retailers is joining the effort.

Since 1973, the NGA has promoted garden-based education. The association recognizes the essential connection so many of us enjoy among people, plants and the environment. It promotes gardening as a means to renew and sustain those ties, developing programs focused on five core areas: youth education, health and wellness, environmental stewardship, community development and home gardening.

The Give a Garden campaign is built on the simple premise that there is someone in your community who will benefit by receiving a “garden” from you. Anyone can take up a trowel and offer the vitality and beauty of plants to another. Your endeavor can be as small as giving a container of geraniums to an elderly neighbor or as big and elaborate as planting an extensive garden in a public space. The opportunity for making a difference through gardening is as wide as your imagination.

You can learn more about this year’s National Gardening Month at www.garden.org. If you’re worried that April is a bit early to begin gardening with anything but peas in our chilly state, consider a small indoor project. Cultivate a windowsill herb garden. Pot up a peculiar plant such as a Venus flytrap with a child you know. Grow nutritious alfalfa, broccoli or mung bean spouts in a glass jar or plastic container on the kitchen countertop. Or simply watch peas, beans or pumpkin seeds sprout by keeping them in a glass jar with a bit of water for a week or so. Grow a terrarium with mosses and small evergreen plants harvested from the largest colonies you can find in your woods.

If you are working with children who like to paint and make crafts, buy some inexpensive terra cotta pots and let them indulge their natural creativity by painting the pots. Repot houseplants in the pots or give them away as birthday and thank you gifts. Alternatively, make “pot people” by painting faces on small clay pots. Fill the pots with growing medium and plant grass seed, water, and watch the “hair” grow.

Make hand-painted plant markers or flashy homemade ornaments and give them to a gardener in your neighborhood to put between rows to frighten off birds. Build a birdhouse with someone else. If your carpentry skills aren’t the best, perhaps you’ll find kits or plans at your local garden centers or at a craft shop.

If you don’t make new year’s resolutions because you never can keep them, consider rolling up your sleeves for national gardening month this year. Unlike a resolution that may be too large to accomplish, the month will offer ample opportunity to make a small contribution to someone else’s life: even a one-time, one-day commitment can make a world of difference to someone who does not yet know the joy of gardening.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.