Need some inspiration to motivate your child to spend more time outdoors? Nurture their creativity by introducing them to gardening with these simple, cost-free craft projects that will distract them away from their screens and inspire their imagination. It’s fun for all the family.
Make a garden in a pot
Design a dream miniature garden in a pot, whether you recycle a margarine tub or reuse a large flower pot; let children’s imagination run wild making a garden for dinosaurs, fairies or their favourite film character.
All materials can be collected from around the home and garden. Get them to find interesting sticks and leaves, moss and stones, seed heads, grasses and the odd flower, succulent or fern. Layer the base of your container with some small stones or grit for drainage and fill the rest of the pot with peat-free compost and then get designing!
Make a bottle wormery
Worms are an integral part of any garden. Children squeal in delight with getting their hands dirty finding worms so here’s a great project to have some fun with while illustrating the important job that worms do underground; create a wormery in a bottle.
Recycle a large plastic bottle and carefully cut the top off of it then send the kids out on a treasure hunt to find worms. These can be found under stones, pots, in a border or compost heap; just make sure the worms are not harmed.
Fill your bottle with thin layers of damp sand and compost, top with chopped up kitchen scrapes like salad, grated carrot and potato peelings and a handful of dead garden leaves; now add your worms! Cover the bottle with a piece of fabric, secure with an elastic band and pop some small air holes in the top.
Wrap a sheet of black paper or fabric around the bottle, worms like the dark. Leave your wormery for a few days whilst the worms work their magic mixing the layers and pulling food down from the surface, then have a peek. After a week make sure you return the worms to the garden.
Pressed flowers
Press some garden flowers; it’s an ideal activity for indoors on rainy days. The tradition of flower pressing dates back centuries and is still a lovely way to preserve some of your favourite blooms. You can buy a specific flower press but a bunch of heavy books will also do the trick.
Place flowers between two sheets of white printer paper then folded newspaper; sandwich in cardboard before pressing. The paper will absorb the moisture so be generous with your layers.
Flowers can take about three to four weeks to press depending on their moisture content. Patience will be needed but enjoy the excitement of peeling back the paper to reveal the delicate work of art beneath. These pressed flowers can then be stuck on to cards or tags or framed as a gift.
Leaf rubbing
Leaf rubbing is a wonderful way for children to learn about leaf shapes and patterns and with an exhaustive list of leaves to choose from you can create bespoke artwork that represents your garden or things you collected on a nature walk.
Place your finds on a table, with the raised veins facing upwards. Cover with a sheet of paper and rub over the surface with an oil crayon or coloured pencil. Using the side of the pencil nib will produce a more even picture than using the tip; make sure you work round all the edges of the leaf. The intricate pattern will be revealed as if by magic. You can even paint your wax leaf with watercolours.
Jam Jar terrarium
Create a garden in a jam jar! Terrariums look cool in the home but can be expensive so recycle a jam jar and make a brilliant budget terrarium.
Make sure your jar is clean, if you have a dishwasher, stick it through a wash. Once dry fill the bottom with a layer of grit, sand, perlite or clay pebbles for drainage. Add a barrier between the drainage and potting soil, moss is ideal or active charcoal is often added to terrariums as it helps to remove toxins; this can be bought online.
Now add a layer of peat-free compost and enjoy choosing plants! Fittonia, the Nerve plant are slow growing so well suited to a small space, as are cacti and some succulents like Sempervivum, Echeveria, or go soil-less with air plants. Mist inside the jars each week.
Terrariums can be sealed or open. Closed jars create greater humidity but open jars allow condensation to evaporate and are less likely to attract fungal diseases.
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