This comes naturally to children, Steven says. Good places to look in the garden are under rocks, climbing a tree (thankfully, if you have one that children can climb), and on the ground. Emma loves discovering facts by exploring, she told us in a talk that she and Steven gave to a group of parents and children. Gardens are an easy place to show the natural world, to provide a space of wonder and fun, and for children to get out and away from screens.
The space in the children's garden doesn't have to be big, says Dannenmaier; it just needs to be varied. Children need places to run and hide, and places to dig with debauchery. Containers should be made of wood, not clay; children 2 to 4 years old are an important stage of turning the pot over. So what's going on in the play garden? When it comes to the characteristics of the children's garden, be simple and consider what will make the garden fun.
Most children love to play with various containers, such as plastic watering cans, sand buckets, plastic bowls or old pots and pans, baking trays, muffin tins, or other clay cake containers. Some of the gardens featured are butterflies, Shakespeare and a children's garden with a pond of frogs, pumpkins and berry bushes. Since the Cherokee have always been a gardening town, there are plenty of traditional crops for David to try. The ambition of authors Monica Wiedel-Lubinski and Karen Madigan is to encourage more families to go outdoors so that children discover that nature is fun.
But why not just encourage them to find interesting things to collect in nature? (Gardens are also a form of nature, you know. Whatever you do, don't just think that a backyard swing set is the accessory for a kindergarten. Even if you have quite limited garden space, your child can have their own garden by gardening in pots. You can place a sandpit or inflatable pool in the yard, a swing ball (if they still exist) or a mini trampoline on the lawn, and all of a sudden, the well-designed adult garden is as welcoming to children as it is to adults without it having to look like a playground.
In the garden example below, it's not a particularly large garden, but having the live willow arch with a path surrounding the lawn, you can't see the entire garden. Kids can still feel the thrill of growing up, even if their garden is a single plastic tub of potatoes or a climbing tomato, or if it's several containers filled with green beans, flowers, and pumpkins. Once germinated, they can be transplanted into pots until they are ready to go out, or they can be placed in a cold frame that is placed on top of the garden bed. Whatever you do in the garden, have fun first and foremost, but don't forget the most important design principles to make your garden look good all year round and be more than just a playground.
And taking children to gardens where they can fulfill their natural inclinations to rummage, sting, raise, jump, hunt, hit, climb and hide is an important goal in the life of Molly Dannenmaier, a Washington writer and former children's editor of Garden Design magazine. If children are small enough, any garden can be a great adventure park because of their imagination.
