Kids’ Valley Garden is a hand-coded gardening website created by Louise Larabie with graphics and web design by her son, Ray Larabie. Its cheerful illustrations, handmade lettering, and tiled garden backgrounds have welcomed young gardeners since the early days of the web.
Louise received the Ontario Horticultural Association’s Best Junior Leader Award in 1997. She died in 2012, but her garden lives on. The Pakenham Horticultural Society has told Ray that it still uses the site to teach children about gardening.
A garden restored
In 2026, Ray began rebuilding the site so it would work well on phones and modern computers. The restoration keeps Louise’s voice, the original pixel artwork, the Croteau lettering, the bright colors, and the familiar garden paths. Underneath, the articles now live in simple Markdown files and are assembled by one reusable system.
The gardening information is also being checked against current, reliable sources. Pages that involve tools or garden products are being reviewed first.
Credits
- Louise Larabie: original gardening content and the heart of the project
- Ray Larabie: original graphics, site design, maintenance, and restoration
- Rina Larabie: editing, spelling, grammar, and tidying the original site
Kids’ Valley Garden remains available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License shown at the bottom of every page.