Garden Center!

Warning to larvaphobes: contains gross photos of fake caterpillars!!!!!!

Our girls adore flowers, gardening and worms. Plant nurseries, garden centers, farms, butterfly gardens - they love them all. They were my motivation to make that dirt project some time back - till this day, it remains one of their most beloved toys. And with winter finally behind us, we've been visiting our favorite garden center a lot - it's gorgeous and about the size of a small city. 

The girls are entranced by this place - the colors, the smells, the shelves of anything from living plants to gardening books to rubber gloves to ornaments, and riding on the open wagons from building to building, taking everything in. Naturally, they are now suddenly very interested in the trade of plants and their associated accessories. And they've gathered all the paper, plastic and felt flowers in the house and opened florist shops, been flower-peddlars-on-foot and sold bouquets, farmer's market-style. So last weekend, to fuel their frenzy, we made  our own garden center. 

There were seed packets

with instructions for the er...layest of laymen,

 and fertilizer.

There were watering cans

to irrigate potted flowers

so they would grow tall and strong.

There were fruit trees

all ready for harvest.

There were garden tools, like shovels (we call them spades):

And for the vile bugs that terrorize plants and gardeners everywhere,

we stocked bug spray.

Also weed-killer for those other kinds of plant pests:

The girls and I spent two happy days putting all these together. There was so much to invent, color, cut out, fill, glue, roll, string and sort. 

Everyone had something to do and make - more challenging stuff for the older ones, and simpler projects for the littles-

and coloring by all, at all their different skill levels.

Any project that involves coloring is a hit in our house, especially if those projects are 3D sorts.

We'll be sharing how we made our garden center in the following posts:
Pop-up potted flowers
Watering Cans
Caterpillars, Pesticides and Weedkiller
Seed Packets


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