Updated: 24/07/2020

Children’s Garden Ideas

Playing outdoors in a safe environment is necessary for children of all age groups. Home gardens are the perfect escapes for most children, especially during the weekends and holidays. Playing outdoors ensures that your kids get enough sunshine, fresh air, and physical activity. 

Most home gardens are known for their immaculate greens, beautiful flowering plants, hedges, shrubs, seasonal flowers, herb patches, garden furniture, reading nooks, and so on. No one seems to concentrate on providing creativity and inspiration to children. With a few innovative ideas that fuel kids’ imagination and curiosity, you can set up a fabulous children’s garden. You can help nurture their creativity with a few inclusions to the garden. 

As with any activity related to children, they must be overseen by a responsible adult at all times.

Let us look at a few children’s garden ideas that can get you started.

Swing Set:

A children’s garden swing set is a fantastic idea for a trendy garden installation that also works as play and entertainment. Swing sets are usually easy to install and do not take up a lot of space. The packaging comes with detailed instructions on safely assembling the set. You would need a robust, mature tree or a sturdy structure to ground it well. Grounding the swing set ensures that it does not wobble and come apart. With the constant swinging action, swing sets need firm foundations to avoid accidents and mishaps. Swing sets encourage group playtime and teach kids the importance of sharing and awaiting their turn patiently. 

Trampolines:

Enclosed trampolines with safety nets are a great addition to any garden. These can be used by adults and children, and are known to be safe spaces for children to jump and have fun. Trampoline enclosures help keep unwanted insects and birds away from children. Trampolines are excellent forms of exercise and are known to increase bone density in youngsters. Jumping regularly is an excellent form of cardio, and gets the blood pumping, while also toning the entire muscular system of the child. The increased gravitational force helps increase lymphocyte activity and aids in boosting immunity to ward off infections and other diseases.  If your child is very young consider a toddler trampoline for a safer choice.

Chalkboard or Plexiglass Board:

Most children need something to do with their hands all day long. They have tonnes of energy that they need to expend. Installing a chalkboard on the fence or an exterior shaded wall can help entertain your children for hours while they play in the fresh air.

Plexiglass boards are also fabulous for children who like to paint. You can provide them with shaving cream and non-stick washable tempera so you can clean everything up quickly. With a little water and a damp cloth, the cleaning is complete. You can also reuse the chalkboard and plexiglass at any time. 

Playhouse:

Outdoor playhouses are an excellent way for children to interact with each other. The installation of these playhouses is quite easy, and the materials used to construct them are child and pet-friendly. Playhouses are great for development since they encourage essential skills like sharing, social interaction, teamwork, and task management in children. Playhouses are also considered as safe houses for children and are an excellent place for them to de-stress after homework and TV time. If you enforce a few rules during playtime in the playhouse, you would also be teaching your children the values of time and responsibility. Simple conditions or regulations could be the completion of homework and household chores before playing in the playhouse. 

Nurturing a Garden:

Keeping a space only for children’s gardening will inculcate great values in your kids while teaching them how to nurture and grow a garden. Teaching them how to tend, respect, and help plants grow will teach them the values of patience, love, care, and hard work. You could mark out a spot in the existing garden and put a small fence around it with your children’s names on it. A brightly coloured low picket fence or a raised bed of rainbow colours will also do the trick. To increase awareness and curiosity, you could pore through online gardening websites, and teach them how to plant flowers, and herbs, and also how to harvest at the right time. These life values will help shape your kids to be better adults while creating a lifetime of happy memories. 

Sensory Table:

If you have preschoolers at home, you would be aware of how perceptive they are to different textures. Set up a shaded sensory table filled with non-toxic material like water, grains of sand, dry beans, and regular-sized stones for them to put their hands through. You could also place some ice and allow them to play with it.