Creating a Childrens Garden

Creating a garden for a child is a gift for both you and the child you’re creating it for. The garden should not only teach your child about butterflies, bees and flowers but should stimulate senses as well. Because children do respond to color readily and also like to touch and smell things, you need to incorporate all these into your garden. It needs to be entertaining, inviting and child safe.

It needs to be entertaining, inviting and child safe.

What to do

You need to have your child involved from step one which would be choosing the shape of the garden. It should be something simple like a circle, a square or a shape like a diamond or butterfly. When you've decided what shape to make your child’s garden then you’ll need to dig up and amend the soil. Letting your child dig in the dirt is a great past time and it instills the basics of gardening. Your child will have more of a sense of “it’s my garden” if he or she is actively involved.

Children should be actively involved

/Watering her garden

Choosing the plants

When you chose plants for the garden, have your child help pick them out. Take him or her with you to the Gardening Center or pull up an online gardening center and see what strikes their interest and why. Sunflowers are a great choice as well as coneflowers, Lamb’s Ear, snapdragons, pansies and forget-me-not. The soft fuzziness of the Lamb’s Ear is fun to touch and the snapdragon’s mouth opens and closes. The happy faces on the pansies and the daisy like petals with the hard center in the middle of the coneflower will liven up your child’s tactile senses. Also Ornamental grasses such as, White and Pink Pampas Grass, Blue Festuca, or Zebra Grass, will make a nice addition with their different sizes and textures. Scarlet Bee Balm will give your child an up close and personal encounter with bees at work.

If you have enough room, a small wandering path from flower bed to flower bed is perfect for keeping a child’s attention. Also, you need to remember since your child is small, keep everything “child size”. Perhaps a small bench for sitting or a bird feeder at a height your child can add the seed to. You can even add some fun solar lights that glow at night in different colors.

 

keep everything “child size”

If you do add a water feature, please make it child safe. If you put in a pond with goldfish and plants, make sure you fasten a grate or covering of some kind so your child can’t access it. Another option is a small fountain that can be set on a stump or on top of a large rock. A pair or two of wind chimes on a stake or in a small tree is always welcome as well as pinwheels whirling around in the breeze.

When you teach children how to garden you are also unleashing their creativity and getting them outdoors. This gardening skill is something that can be passed on from generation to generation for years to come.