Here, the soil is starting to stir. I’m sure all of those sleeping earthworms are starting to make their way to the surface, moving up through the runoff that comes from the melting snow.
Ah, spring. It gets me thinking about gardening. My daughter has a small garden in our yard. Since our yard is itself quite small, her garden is fairly tiny, but it seems to suffice. Since we have many visits from the usual array of urban animals, including dogs, cats, raccoons, and skunks, our solution to gardening is often to place gardens in containers. My daughter’s garden is no exception. If you have a teeny, tiny space and your child wants to garden, a child’s garden is perfect for a balcony. Here are a few ideas for squeezing a garden into a small space.
Strawberry planters can host berry plants, but they can also host all sorts of small garden beds. These planters have many different openings, and children can put a different plant into each hole.
How about a garden in a boot? This is where we keep our water plants. I have a thriving group of cattails in an old rubber boot. The bad drainage makes it into a pond-like environment.
Or what about a garden in an old chair? We have the skeleton of an old metal chair in our garden. I repainted it and took out the middle, then placed a pot in the center. This is the place where we have my daughter’s fairy garden, a miniature garden with small plants and accessories for the fairies.
One idea that I want to try this year is the brilliant array of pots that I saw at a garden earlier this week. They had placed a piece of rebar in the ground. They placed one large pot at the bottom, putting the rebar through the hole. All the way up the piece of metal were progressively smaller pots. What a great use of space!
What creative containers have you used in the garden?
Image Credit:[mordoc]