Creating a little special garden with children is great fun and pretty easy to do. I did this little fairy garden with my girls but if your mini gardener is not into fairies it can easily be changed to an elf village or if you remove the little houses and add some scary dinosaurs it can be turned into a prehistoric garden.
You'll need:
- little wooden bird houses (you can get them from most craft shops)
- leftover outdoor wood paint or sample pots
- brushes and pot of water to rinse the brushes
- outdoor succulents
- succulent soil or a mix of compost and sand/small garden gravel
- garden gravel
- shallow outdoor plant pot
As the paint will take a little while to dry, I would suggest starting with the painting of the bird houses. These will become the homes for the garden fairies so the children can decorate with whatever colour they like.
I decided to get the girls a couple of small tester pots of fence/shed paint as the only outdoor paint I had in the garage was the grey we have used for our fence. If they want they can glue on additional decorations and glitter (best if these are biodegradable) to make the houses extra special.
As long as the paint is wet it will still dissolve in water so it is advisable to clean the brushes as soon as the kids have finished painting them.
Once they are painted you can leave them to dry and get the rest of the fairy garden ready.
Fill the bottom of the pot with broken pot pieces or small stones to increase drainage (succulents don't like to sit in water), place you plants in the pot and fill the gaps with the soil. Make sure that you don't overfill the pot as it is important to leave enough space to accommodate a small gravel path and the fairy houses.
Once the houses are dry you can place them in the pot on top of the soil. The ones we used are quite light so I put some gravel inside the house to keep it in place in all weathers. To finish it off you can add little gravel paths starting at each house and weaving in between the plants. If you want to make it extra special you can also quite easily add some miniature bunting or some outdoor solar fairy lights.
We then placed the pot in a shady and undisturbed part of the garden so the fairies can come and go without anyone noticing....shhhh!!!
Succulents are great plants for little ones as they require little watering and not much care so this type of small garden can be an ideal introduction to gardening for little ones.
So what mini garden are you planning to make?