National Children’s Gardening Week – Six Ideas

National Children’s Gardening Week

It’s National Children’s Gardening Week from 25th May to 2nd June, which coincides with half term. This is a great time to swap out screen time for green time. There are so many benefits of gardening with children as Squires Garden Centres highlights in this article.

Here are a few simple gardening ideas to try this National Children’s Gardening Week…

Quirky Planters

You can transform unwanted items such as old wellies, shoes, tins and bottles into quirky plant pots. They look great and are a brilliant way to recycle unwanted items. Suttons gives the rundown on what flowers to sow this month: https://www.suttons.co.uk/flower-seeds/flowers-to-sow/may

Sew some fruit, vegetable and salad seeds

This is one of our Summer Holiday Challenges. Get some seeds that are suitable for sowing in the summer months and are easy to grow such as carrots, salad leaves, cucumbers, peas or pumpkins (which if sown May/June will be ready for Halloween). Let the kids prepare the ground, sow them, label them and care for them. Then look forward to harvest time! I find children are usually more open to eating/trying things they’ve grown themselves.

We’ve also planted some potatoes in the past.

Cress heads

An oldie, but a goodie. Remove the top of the eggs, leaving two-thirds intact. Wash the shells and carefully dry. Then decorate with felt tip pens. The usual is to draw a face to accompany the cress ‘hair’, but great creative! Next dampen some cotton wool balls in water and place one in each shell and then sprinkle some cress seeds on top. Put them in a sunny spot and in about 5-7 days it’ll be ready to harvest. Egg and cress sandwich anyone?

Encouraging wildlife into your garden

Plants provide food and shelter for wildlife. In previous years, we’ve scattered wild flower seeds and have done Beebombs, which attract butterflies, bees and other insects.

Flowering plants such as lavender, foxgloves and roses provide plenty of nectar. Birds love the humble daisy, and sunflowers are a big hit as we discovered for ourselves.

You could also add a Ladybird tower to attract this cheerful spotty bug to your garden as well as the other beneficial insects, which keep pesky aphids and greenfly at bay.

Grow sunflowers from seed

Who doesn’t love this cheery, bold and bright flower? They’re incredibly easy to grow and shoot up quickly. Now is the perfect time to sow seeds outdoors for blooms from June through to September. You can even plant a seed in an individual biodegradable pot containing a soil coin and start off indoors. The pot can then be planted directly into the ground outside when the sunflower is ready. The Big Sunflower Project has some handy hints and tips on the transition from indoor to outdoor.

Make a miniature terrarium – mini garden in a jar

We’ve not done this before, but it looks cute and fun!

• Use a clean glass jar such as a jam jar
• Add a layer of decorative stones and sand
• Top with soil
• Add moss on top that will act as grass
• Plant miniature plants or cuttings into your jar
• Get creative; add a small decorated rock or Lego characters, plastic figurines or animals

Similarly you can create a fairy or dinosaur garden. Simply sow flower seeds that are appropriate for the time of year and add decorative details such as a house, pebbles and mini ‘trees,’ and then add your figurines.

Happy gardening and please post any of your children’s’ gardening ideas or projects in the comments section below.

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