Gardening is a fantastic hobby to start at a young age. It offers a bevy of new skills, the opportunity to take part in the transformation of a child’s local environment to suit their interests, and helps to support kinetic development while connecting with nature. 

Designing a garden space to be kid-friendly can be a fun process for both parents and children. You should focus on making the space engaging and educational, as well as keeping an emphasis on creating a safe place for your child to engage in play activities. 

Safety First

As always, when dealing with children, keeping a close eye on the safety considerations around your garden design is important. There are several potential ways to lower the risk of harm when playing outside (particularly with low supervision). 

Something to remember with young children is their tendency to explore the world through taste. As a result, they’re likely to try tasting everything, from the soil to plant life within the garden. In small doses, most plants aren’t harmful to adults. For children, though, because they’re much smaller and don’t have well-developed immune systems yet to deal with plant toxins, ingesting plants that aren’t meant to be eaten can cause them to become sick. 

Try choosing plant varieties that are non-toxic. Some ideas might include choosing to grow herbs or vegetables in the plant beds that children can reach. Plants such as sunflowers, marigolds, snapdragons, or African violets are also non-toxic. If you’re concerned, try talking to your local garden centre. 

Another great safety tip is to use a soft fall mulch, like playground mulch, which can provide a soft place to land if your child has a fall. Soft fall mulch is a certified undersurface material, provides impact absorption, and is made of 100% sustainable pine chips. 

Finally, make sure to have secure fencing all the way around the garden to keep your child from being able to wiggle their way out onto the surrounding roads or off into the neighbours’ properties. Having a secure fence will provide peace of mind when your child asks to play in their new garden space. 

Engaging and Educational Features

Now that we have a safe place for our kiddo to play in, it’s time to start making it a fun place to hang out. There are a variety of ways to provide engagement in the garden, including using sensory spaces, interactive exhibits, or play spaces.

One good idea for a garden space is a small sandpit. This can easily be created from a raised garden bed, and provides your child a place to have fun and create sculptures or play with toys like diggers and trucks. It also provides the opportunity to learn about physical forces like gravity through the digging of tunnels and the need for structural support for sandcastle building. 

Another great idea for engagement and education can be the use of wildlife attractors. These are butterfly houses, bug hotels, or bird feeders. As animals in your local environment use the attractors, it provides an opportunity for you to teach your child about different species and the wildlife surrounding them as well as giving them something exciting to check for each day when they go out into the garden. 

Learning or play spaces like a small desk or chalkboard can provide endless fun for a child in a garden. You can have your child practice sketching or drawing the flowering in the garden while you do the weeding, or you can install a weather station to show them how weather changes like rain and atmospheric pressure influence the local environment. 

Creativity and Personalisation

Finally, providing a garden space is a great opportunity for your child to have somewhere in the home where they can put their own stamp. Try offering them their own garden bed in which to grow their own small plot of flowers or veggies. Alternatively, you can ask for their input on design ideas, like the theme of the garden and the design choices. 

Adding colour can be a great way to inject some personality into your garden space. This can be easily done in a few ways. One simple yet elegant way is to use coloured mulch. For example, red mulch is much more interesting to look at than the usual brown. 

If you’re interested in going bigger, you can also offer your child painting opportunities along fences or on big sheets of plasterboard. These provide durable canvases that can be changed in and out along with the seasons. For example, try painting a pumpkin together for Halloween and a Christmas tree for the holiday season. 

However, if you decide to decorate your garden, the team at Gembrook Garden Supplies will have the knowledge to support you. If you have some ideas but you aren’t sure how best to carry them out, come talk to our friendly team today!

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