planning a garden area

[littleladyg]

I'm try to make up a plan of how we can enrich our garden in my setting. We have lots of outdoor toys but need some ideas of games/activities to do and different child friendly plants we could get the children to help plant and look after.
Any ideas would be very appreciated.

thanks

[shellyjoe]

what age range are the children re: activities/games?

Child friendly plants - why not make a fruit/vegetable patch and fresh herbs. Rocket and reddish grow quickly so they are good to use as the children will see the progress of their work faster. The children will be gaining knowledge of where fruit/veg come from. Recently i did a topic on fruit/veg and i was amazed at how many children aged 2 and a half to 4 thought fruit/veg came from a shop. Depending on the age range you could extend on this by creating a market/veg shop, developing their understanding of what happens to the veg/fruit once it is harvested. Steer clear of Rhubarb as the leaves are poisonious
Hope this helps

[bookpixie]

hi littleladyg,
Like Shellyjoe we have a herb garden anda lot of otherclourful flowers and will possibly start a vegtable garden if we get permission its slightly different in the hospital envirmonet dont want any little ones accidentally eating when they are nil by mouth!
we also bought a sensory garden tub which came with lots of colourful chimes windblowers,flags,pinwheels ect we also installed a butterfly home and put up information picture about which butterflys are which ect,we pained some games on the floors as well like hopscotch a road and roundabout for cars and bikesand a hungry cattapilliar ,we also have lady bug homes,squirell feeders,nesters and a minbeast trapdoor so the children can learn about the different widlife things like that we got a lot of our ideas from different catalogues.Hope this helps :)

[bookpixie]

oh I meant to say we had to painstakingly go through a list of different herbs/flowers to find out which ones were non toxic to both people and animals :)