Springtime is perfect for gardening, and gardening is a great activity for little ones to get involved with! Lots of children really enjoy gardening, mostly because they can get their hands dirty! But it’s also a great opportunity for them to learn. Try out some of our tips for some Springtime gardening fun with your little ones!
Fruit and vegetable garden
Not only is planting a vegetable garden a fun activity for your little one, it’s also a fantastic way to teach them about where their food comes from. It can even be a wonderful way of encouraging fussy eaters to eat more vegetables. Let your child get involved in choosing which vegetables to plant. Vegetables like carrots, peas, beans and kale are all easy to grow for young children. Some kale and bean seeds are quite large, so they’re really easy for small hands to handle and plant.
Some fruits can be grown in containers or outdoors in the UK. Strawberries are easily grown, and little ones will enjoy eating the fruit straight from the plant as soon as it’s ripe.
Raspberries and blueberries are also very easy to grow, but blueberries do need an acidic soil.
Fairy garden
Fairy gardens will capture your child’s imagination. They can be planted in a container, but you can also use an area of your garden. If you have an older child, you could make a small fairy house out of lolly sticks.
You can also encourage your little one to scavenge outside for any little items that a fairy might like to have outside her house. Small stones, feathers and twigs can all be repurposed to create a magical fairy home.
You can plant easy to grow miniature plants around the fairy house. Herbs such as creeping thyme and dwarf rosemary are easy to grow, stay small, and will add pleasant smells to the fairy abode. Small flowers such as primroses, snowdrops, and miniature roses, as well as succulents like hen and chick will add colour, and places for a fairy and other woodland creatures to hide.
Painted container gardens
Containers are a fantastic space-saving way of gardening. You can get plastic plant pots and containers very cheaply from almost anywhere, and painting them can be a wonderful project for your kids.
Make sure that your pots are completely clean, and dry. You can use acrylic paints, but the pots won’t be waterproof. You could apply a gloss enamel, or some other waterproof treatment if you want to put the pots outside. Once the paint is dry, you can plant matching or contrasting flowers. Maybe paint a sun onto a pot and plant sunflowers. Or a butterfly painted pot could be home to flowers like milkweed and lavender that will attract butterflies and bees.
Seed bombs
Making a seed bomb is a fun way to spend a rainy day, while still getting some gardening time in with your little ones. Seed bombs are easy to make. You need 3-5 packets of seed, an egg cup of clay soil, and 2 egg cups of peat free compost. Mix all the ingredients together until they form a gluey consistency. Form balls with the mix and leave until they’ve dried. When they’re dry, your little ones can throw the bombs wherever they want and watch the results spring up over time!
