Watching my girls play in the backyard from my kitchen window sparked a great idea this week! Create a garden centre or flower shop for the kids. Using artificial flowers from the dollar store and a few other gardening things we can create a little centre for themselves. You can use real flowers too but this set up should last me a few years!
Several years ago I made a potting table out of a simple wooden shelf I wasn’t using anymore. Click on the link below to see how that was created.
Next we need some flowers! I went to the dollar store for a few bunches of flowers that looked like something I actually have in my garden.
For this project you will need:
- several bunches of artificial flowers
- empty plant containers
- foam knee pad or pool noodle
- scissors
- wire cutter snips
- burlap (optional)
These are called 4 cell planter trays but you can use other sizes.
Every year the girls don’t want me to throw out the plastic containers that come with the little flower and vegetable plants we buy at the garden centre. They want all the little tags that come with them too so they imagine they are selling the flowers. After seeing them rearrange the empty containers imagining they had flowers in them-I thought why not get some dollar store fake flowers and make it more realistic for them.
As I wandered around the dollar store I considered how I could get the flowers to stand up in the plant trays. I came up with this! A foam knee pad/seat pad.
It’s similar to a pool noodle but I thought this size would fit really well into my plant trays and I was right!
First of all, pull the sections of foam apart.
Then get your scissors and snip it 1 and 1/2 inches or 3cm long.
Test out the height and cut some more.
This is so easy. Just keep cutting off more. I wanted to give the at least 5 of these for their store. I might make even more…
Now for the flowers!
I started by bending out the branch of the flowers.
Snip it off several inches below the flowers. If you cut it too long, you can always bend the ends. I would rather they are too long than too short so the girls could make a little bouquet later or use them for something else.
Now test it in the container and see how it looks.
This looked pretty good but I thought since I have a huge scrap of burlap waiting to be used. Why not add burlap to the top.
Cut that to size. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Next poke the flowers through the burlap.
Voila!
You could hot glue all of it in place or you could just leave it so the kids can rearrange it and tend to their flowers.
Next we set up shop on the table and added some signs.
My kids also save all of the flower tags that come with every plant to tell you how much sun or shade it should get.
…So we tried to match up some to the colors of the flowers we had for our imaginary store.
If you don’t have the 4 cell-planters you can use any small containers. You could use a pool noodle or Styrofoam from packaging in a bigger one or several small pieces of foam to fill a bigger pot.
Also, look around for other gardening items you have for the store. We had gloves, a mini shovel and rakes and watering cans.
Hopefully, this inspired you to get the kids out playing with their imaginations.
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