10 fun garden projects for kids
28.08.2023Getting kids into the garden is so rewarding. There’s nothing better than grubby hands and smiling faces – whatever the time of year. If you’re looking for ways to encourage your children into the open air and away from their screens, here are 10 easy garden projects for kids.
1. Grow something
Growing plants from seeds is a unique joy. Watching to see the changes as your seed shoots up through the earth, sprouts leaves, and soars is wonderful. Talk to your child about what they’d like to grow – something to eat? Or something pretty?
Green beans are quick to grow, have pretty flowers for visual appeal (and for insect food!) and are good to eat. Sunflowers are also popular – especially if you have competitive kids! Perhaps you could encourage your neighbours to get growing as well. See what you can achieve together.
2. Create refuges for slowworms
Slow worms are legless lizards that love nothing more than hiding in the undergrowth or under refugia, eating up your garden pests! Loose steps, rocks, plant pots and pieces of wood left lying around could all act as natural habitats for slow worms, but you could try and make them feel more at home by creating a tailor-made slow worm home.
This doesn’t need to be anything complicated. A piece of corrugated iron hidden under a hedge or amongst your bedding plants might be sufficient. The kids will enjoy lifting it up (every now and again – slow worms won’t settle there if you do it too often!) and seeing what they can see.
Try experimenting with different types of materials to see what’s popular in your garden. Old roofing felt, buckets, and even under garden waste bags all make good hiding places for slow worms and other creatures that like to keep hidden from predators.
3. Make an insect house
Insect houses are available from every garden centre these days, but you don’t need to buy one – you can make your own. Try laying an old ceramic plant pot on its side and filling it with a mixture of rocks, hollow stems (e.g., bamboo) and twigs to create lots of nooks and crannies for insects to hide away. Or you can go big and build this giant bug hotel.
Natural habitats like log piles that are left alone to rot down will also provide a great habitat for insects and may also attract other creatures, like toads and grass snakes.
4. Make a bird feeder (and see who you can spot using it)
There are a lot of ways to make bird feeders. You could go biodegradable and cover a toilet roll tube with lard before rolling it in seeds or fill an emptied-out orange skin with a mix of bird food and peanut butter.
Alternatively, you could make use of your empty plastic bottles to make a more permanent feeder. Simply cut holes for the birds to access the seeds through, and push a stick through to make a perch – as in this bird feeder from the Natural History Museum.
Once you’ve got your bird feeder in place, watch to see who is making use of it. Buying a simple guide to garden birds helps build your children’s understanding of the natural world and makes them more engaged in looking after it.
5. Put out water stations for hedgehogs and birds
During the hot, dry weather, it’s important to ensure our garden wildlife gets plenty of water! Different creatures will need different types of access to water, so task your children with figuring out solutions for all of them.
Something shallow and low on the ground for hedgehogs. Something that the bees can access – perhaps a small dish with rocks for them to perch on. A bird bath for the birds. Again, you can see what you can make out of disused garden equipment. You don’t need to spend a lot to make a big difference to nature!
6. Create a fun zone
Every garden should have a fun zone. Talk to your children about what they’d like to play with and see what you can come up with together.
A sand pit is lots of fun, especially if you can add water to build amazing sand shapes. Mud can be equally fun – and requires the same kind of set-up, so if you have an underused sand pit, try swapping out the sand for soil and see what reaction you get. You could even bring some of your inside toys outside and set up a little mud village!
A mud kitchen is also great fun, and you don’t need to buy something purpose-built. Kids will have just as much fun with wooden spoons, an old washing-up bowl and some plant pots. You can make magic with very little if you just add mud.
7. Make a snail haven
Encourage your children to get creative and experiment with different types of wildlife-friendly domains within your garden. A maze of rocks and leaves might be a perfect snail haven, or they could build a house of sticks and see whether the woodlice move in.
Learning about which habitats attract different creatures is lots of fun – especially if you then conduct a little minibeast census and see what’s taken up residence in all these places.
8. Find/build a den
Have you got a hole in the hedge, or a dead space behind your garden room? You have a den in the making! Children love hidey holes and will happily sit in what appears to be an uncomfortable space if they think it’s all theirs.
Let them use their imaginations and create their own perfect hideout. You could get involved with the den-building, or you could give the kids free range with timber and tools and see what happens!
9. Make your garden hedgehog friendly
Hedgehog-friendly gardening is much more of a hot topic now, as people realise that our boxed-in gardens aren’t allowing these cute critters the freedom of movement they need to thrive.
Ask your children to check your garden for hedgehog sized holes. If there aren’t any, make some! Talk to your neighbours about drilling through the fence at ground level or digging underneath if that’s a possibility.
These holes will not only accommodate hedgehogs but may also make it easier for other wildlife to navigate between gardens.
10. Make your own garden games
Sometimes we can all fall into the trap of buying a lot of kit that we think will somehow facilitate fun. But think of those long summers spent trying to bounce a football off the kerb (kerby, anyone?), or playing hop scotch on the playground. Very minimal kit required!
Why not challenge your children to come up with their own garden games, or set up obstacle courses and race around them? They can then share the game with their friends and before you know it, a new craze has been born!
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