You might be a parent or guardian seeking to develop the gardening skills of your child or ward. If so, here are 6 awesome garden ideas for kids you would definitely fall in love with. Building your child’s gardening skills comes with a lot of perks and nary a downside. It provides recreation and fun, develops their motor skills as well as their sense of nurturing and creating. Making the garden family friendly is also a good step!
Creating inverted tomato planters from plastic bottles
Teach your kids to plant and upcycle at the same time with this plastic planter idea. Get a handful of used plastic bottles. Then, with the aid of scissors, show your kids how to carefully cut off the bottoms. You can then create holes through which you can thread ropes. Then you can ask them to fill up the containers with an adequate quantity of fertile soil. Show them how to plant the tomato seeds. Then help them hang the bottles in areas guaranteed to receive adequate sunlight. Ensure the plastic bottles you use have very low levels of toxicity.Make a greenhouse for your plants using egg cartons
Rather than throwing away those empty egg cartons, you can convert them into handy planters to be conveniently placed on your window sill. Kids can use plastic containers to fill the egg cups with dirt. Then they should place the required number in each cup. A good idea is to let your child write on the sides of each cup the type of seed planted before adding the required amount of water. Here comes the interesting part: cover the container with a plastic wrap or bag to ensure the soil stays moist till the plants start shooting up. Once you notice growth, you should take off the plastic wrapping.Attract butterflies with homemade butterfly feeders
Kids love pretty things, and the sight of butterflies flitting around your yard is sure a pretty sight. Tell them what the project is all about and you would definitely snag their interest. Everyone would have fun filling up several containers with butterfly-attracting plants and placing these butterfly magnets in strategic positions in your yard or garden. Then sit back and watch your children’s faces light up with joy and excitement at being part of inviting those cute creatures to their house.Make fun garden markers
If you have a sizable outdoor garden, you can have your kids involved in the gardening process. A good way is by having them create garden markers for you. It gives them a feeling of importance and also helps in enhancing their creative process. You can paint and design small rocks and stones to resemble garden crops. For instance, carrots, tomatoes, watermelons, and all sorts of fruits and vegetables. Then you place them in the appropriate locations. A detailed tutorial can be found here.
Handy homemade sprinkler
I don’t know about you guys but my personal gardening weakness is watering: I almost always forget to water. So, when I saw this idea on Housing A Forest, I couldn’t wait to share it with other people afflicted with the watering amnesia syndrome. To make it even better, your kids can have great fun building it as evidenced in the post. A plastic bottle comes into play here again (really, they should give an award to the inventor of plastic bottles). Add in your garden hose, a tape, and a drill. Drill holes in the bottle, connect your hose to it and secure it with a tape. Then relax and let your sprinkler do the work.
Fairy gardens and beanstalks
You might worry that your child is too steeped in fantasy and all things make-believe. In that case, they might not interested in getting down and dirty in the garden. So how about enticing him or her with a fairy garden? For example, if you own a small patio, get a large container to serve as the garden. But if your outdoor garden is large enough, then set aside a small area for the fairy garden. Help the child fill up the area or container with rocks and pretty flowers. Then add fairy toys, barbie dolls, and other items that emphasize the ethereal quality of the garden.
Remember the story of Jack and the Beanstalk? If memory serves me right, the story featured a beanstalk that grew all the way through the clouds to the castles of the giants. With this handy tutorial, you can turn your kid’s imagination into the real deal by recreating the scenario with plastic cups, soil, bean seeds, paper-cut castles and clouds, cotton wool, skewers, and voila!
