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Gardening is a fantastic hobby to cultivate with the whole family. Not only does it ensure that you all get plenty of fresh air, but it is also a fantastic form of exercise and something that can be a lot of fun. Not only that, but it is a great way to teach children about the food they eat, where it comes from and why fruit and veggies are so healthy.
No matter whether you have a big or small garden, here are some great gardening ideas you can do together as a family:
Build a House From Sunflowers
If you have young children, theyâll love building their very own playhouse from nothing more than a bunch of sunflowers. Simply mark out a square patch of the garden, dig along the edges and plant lots of sunflower seeds (other high-growing plants and flowers can be used too). Remember to leave a space for the entrance, and then wait for the flowers to grow. When unnecessary grass grows, use electric chainsaws to get rid of them conveniently. As they get bigger, you may need to secure them with sticks, but before you know it, you will have your very own sunflower home.
Grow Your Own
Growing your own food is a great way to save money and an even better one to teach children about food, get them involved in the world around them, and teach them about the rewards of a job well done. Fussy kids are also far more likely to try new veggies if theyâve grown them themselves, so whatâs not to love?
Growing a veggie garden can be as simple as using a fuss-free hydroponics system from Nutriculture Hydroponics, which will allow you to grow without doing any digging, instead relying on a system of water lights and nutrients to make those plants grow. This is great for small spaces and those of you who may want to do your gardening from the comfort of indoors. You can also use gro-bags to grow things like tomatoes and potatoes in any small spaces you may have, which is an easy solution too.
Of course, if you want a bigger project, clearing some space in the garden for a dedicated vegetable patch, where you can get your hands dirty tending the land is also a great project that will bring a huge amount of joy to the kids.
Plant a Herb Garden
If growing your own veggies seems like too much work, you might want to think about growing a herb garden instead. Itâs much more forgiving for beginners, with the added bonus of being extremely fragrant. Young kids will love the sensory experience of being amongst the basil, mint, and lavender, and theyâll love the fact that they have grown something useful and delicious too.
Paint the Shed
If you have a shed in the garden, painting it a pretty colour, or even adding a mural to make it more interesting is a fun little project to undertake on a sunny day in the garden. Let your creativity flow to create something you can be proud of as a family.
Make Your Own Hanging Baskets
Who doesnât love a hanging basket? Theyâre quaint and colourful and pretty easy to make actually. Buy each family member their own hanging basket and hit up the local garden centre or nursery for a selection of pretty plants and flowers, then let everyone create their own, with a competition for the best basket being held at the end of the activity.
To build your baskets, simply fill them with potting mix and plant - it really is that simple. If you want something a bit fancier, you can cut holes in the baskets to thread plants through so that the whole thing is living, but basic baskets can and do look great too.
Start a Compost Heap
You might not think that starting a compost heap sounds like very much fun at all, but if you have kids that love making mudpies and getting messy in the garden, you can pretty much guarantee that theyâll love getting amongst it and turning their leftovers into something that will feed their other gardening projects. Itâll also be a good opportunity for you all to discuss environmental matters, and itâll reduce the amount of waste that goes into your bins too, which is always a win.
Create Your Own Terrarium
If youâre more of the indoor gardening type, creating your own terrarium is the ultimate project. Terrariums are miniature biospheres which are as interesting as they are decorative. You can make them by lining large glass jars ( they must have a wide neck) with potting mix and gravel and planting succulents within. You can then add decorative features like smooth stones and moss until you have a beautiful miniature garden to enjoy.
Create a Bee Hotel
Bees are a vital part of nature and one of the most popular garden insects, so why not create a comfortable hotel for them to come and visit? Itâs pretty easy to do, and along with planting lots of wildflowers, it will ensure you have lots of striped visitors to admire in the garden all summer long.
Grow Seeds
Another great indoor gardening project is sowing and growing seeds, bulbs and sprouts indoors. You can do this cheaply by turning old egg boxes into seed trays. Simply fill them with potting mixture and plant your seeds or bulbs. Good seeds to use include cress and beans, which are fast growers, and which you can eat when theyâre ready. This will help to keep the kids interested.
Build Bird Boxes
Building bird boxes is a great way to learn fine motor skills and how to do basic DIY projects. Once theyâre built, painting them can be a fun activity, and later, hanging them and watching the birds who come by can be very enjoyable, which means this is an activity that can be stretched out over many weeks for not very much money at all.
Paint Some Pots
For the crafty family, there can be nothing more enjoyable than spending a few hours in the garden decorating terracotta potts with interesting designs. It doesnât just have to be pots either, you can also decorate rocks and pebbles with unique designs to make them your own. Just remember to seal them once theyâre dried so that your designs donât fade away over time. What better way could there be to display your plants and flowers?
Make a Mosaic
If you have older kids or youâre looking for a longer, more involved project, why not create your own mosaic right there on the garden path? You can find mosaic tiles at most garden centres and craft stores and they are ideal for creating something unique.
Make Garden Signs
A quick and affordable craft project you can do at any time is creating signs for the garden. Whether you want to create a wall sign with your familyâs name to welcome people to the garden or signs to mark out each area of your garden, you can have a lot of fun getting creative. You can burn writing onto driftwood, paint ice cream lids, transforming them into fancy signs or even stick shells on wood so that they spell out the word âherbsâ and those are just some of the options available to you!
As you can see, there is so much to do in the garden that you could easily make it your main source of family entertainment, when the weather is good, anyway, so what are you waiting for? Get out there and have some fun!
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