Easter Gardens

With Easter coming up we have been taking part in a few crafts and activities; this includes our Easter Cake.

There is a little competition going on at the church we attend for the best Easter garden produced by the children who attend. This, of course, was a challenge that we wanted to join in; as if we needed the motivation to do this anyway, considering that we have made these most years!

The Easter "Resurrection" garden is meant to symbolise the place where Jesus was left to rest and the tomb found to be empty; this then encompasses his resurrection.

Using small trays, which we purchased from a garden centre, we filled them to the top with soil and then levelled them out.

Whilst at the garden centre we were lucky enough to get a selection of standard size plants; we tried to avoid any that would grow to large.

After taking some time to choose and discuss which flowers we wanted use, we then placed them on top of the soil to see if we liked our arrangements. We used a small pot to represent where our tomb would be placed.

Once we were happy with the layout we dug into our soil and planting each flower individually to follow our pattern.

The tray doesn't have any drainage holes so once we planted them we used a little bit of water trying hard not to soak the soils too much.

Using some gravel and small pebbles we created a path coming from our "tomb" flowing through our garden.

The design here is totally down to what the boys wanted and each chose something different.

Everyone has their own interpretation here; some people will want to leave the gardens as they are, some will sprinkle grass seeds over the soil and watch the grass grow over the weeks, some, like us, use woodchip.

The next challenge was making the tomb.

  

Using different types of stones, pebbles or, in our case, slate we stuck these to the pot to make a more realistic tomb. I used a hot glue gun to achieve this; the boys chose which pieces they wanted and I stuck them on.

There is our finished Easter gardens.

Both William and James enjoyed this activity. They enjoyed the methodical placing of the different components as well as learning why they were making the garden.

We were really lucky and only had to pay for the plants and trays. We explained what we were making and said that we didn't want to buy the big bags of soils, pebbles, woodchip and slate and the garden centre filled up little bags of each for us at no cost.

Most gardens centres, especially the smaller ones, are more than willing to do this as they usually have stock that they cannot sell due to bags being split and damaged, so it is always worth asking! It is only a small amount needed really.

So what do you think?

Do you like our gardens?


Oh and if you wanted to pop over to the link to of the church at the top and like the picture of the boys Easter garden on their Facebook page then we would really appreciate. The gardens with the most likes wins!