Get them outdoors and enjoying nature ~
Help them to create their own special space to experiment with plants and garden art. This can be a fun and simple project to do over a weekend.
Keeping them busy every year tending and adding to it.
Bringing them hours of enjoyment and accomplishment.
My children had gardens growing up and had so much fun creating them along the years and were very proud of them. Showing them off by giving garden tours to everyone who visited. They filled them with not only plants and love, but garden art and crafts they created.
20 years later their gardens are still there. A bit overgrown and sadly forgotten. But ready to embrace a new generation of caretakers, "Their Children". How fun that will be to do all over again when they come to visit Grandmama!
~ My daughter's was a fairy garden. Early spring it exploded with crocus, tulips and daffodils. Our cat loved to hide in them and popped out to scare her quite often :) Followed by double daylilies in the summer with gorgeous primrose for the ground cover. She made little paths of tiny pebbles that lead in all directions in her garden. Tiny fairy statues adorned the paths with Fairy houses made of mud and moss.
I smile every time I pass by them.
A simple garden journal is a good way to start.
Map out their garden ideas on paper as to what they envision their garden to become. Keep a garden chore chart along with the journal. With stickers to mark when garden chores are done. When to water, weed, flick those flower eating bugs into a can, dead head the old blossoms and mulching. This reinforces their organizational skills and a sense of responsibility.
Help them work and fertilize the soil to get them going. Maybe encourage them with their own set of children's garden tools.
Then its off to your local nursery or an adventure on your property to gather some plants and watch the fun grow!
By ~ Julie DeGroot
