Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

gwl-g - Re: [gwl-g] Children's Gardens

gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: gardenwriters-on-gardening

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Melanie <melaniev@optonline.net>
  • To: gardenwriters-on-gardening <gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [gwl-g] Children's Gardens
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 08:54:16 -0400

Fran,

If you are ever in the Long Island area, you are welcome to come see my
garden. It is a 1.3 acre childrens paradise.

Children's gardens are my specialty, I've done two large ones for flower
shows. A 30 X 50' Harry Potter garden two years ago and this year a 30' X
50' garden board game. This fall I'll be creating a Pirate Garden at
Farmingdale University.

Here at my own home I've installed as many "dream themes" as a kid could
hope for. As testers, I have my 10 & 14 year old daughters and 11 & 7 year
old girls from up the street who are here every weekend.

Here's some of the features:

1. Lots of open lawn space for frisbee's, bocci, softball and such.

2. English perennial borders bursting with flowers that they can make posies
from.

3. A board game, stepping stones with sayings, laid in a path that they can
follow. They are their own pieces moving through the game.

4. A thyme garden (a formal herb garden). The entrance into this garden is a
hop-scotch board with clock faces, the path is covered with cockle shells.
The garden is puntuated with fence posts topped with outlandish birdhouses
(one house is a man's face and the birds enter and exit through his
nostril), and a glider with a roof.

5. Lots of wind chimes everywhere.

6. Lots of water features. One year I simply filled a large container with
water and a few gold fish. The kids loved it.

7. The pre-requiste built in swimming pool and swingset. Also a very old
teeter-totter (see-saw) which is more popular than the swings.

8. A climbing tree.

9. A hammock (hammock titanic is a favorite game here).

10. A shed that looks like a cottage. It has cabinets filled with craft
supplies, paints, paint brushes, pots to paint, stones gathered from the
beach to paint, straw hats from the $1 store to decorate and so much more!

11.A lemonade stand.

12. For my teenage daughter, a wrought iron gazebo laced with pale lavender
netting and filled with chimes and a jeweled lantern. She likes to lay in it
and read her books.

13. Finally, the most popular spot of all. It was not installed for kids but
they have taken it over! A neighborhood home was having container loads of
pier pilings removed from their yard. I rescued the last container and had
it dumped here. I roto-tilled an undulating trench 1' deep around my compost
heap and we set the pilings on end, varying the heights. The sole purpose
was to hide my large, ugly compost area.

The children have made it their pirate fort, mediaval castle, witches hut
(Hagrid's Hut from Harry Potter) Western fort, and what ever else they can
dream up. They spend hours back there and have gathered all kinds of
acutrements. Cauldron shaped pots and an old lobster pot to mix up magic
potions. Sticks with pointed stones tied to the ends for defense purpose
(they never fight each other, only imaginary invaders, sometimes from Mars
:-) Old tools are favorites for them. They've gathered moss and made
miniature moss gardens on the tops of some of the pilings.

To add to the theme we hung a tire cut to look like a parrot from the
overhanging tree and added lots of hosta. Right now I'm searching for an old
row boat so they can pretend they're out at sea.

****************
Fran, daylily rust is not inspiring to me. Rust isn't a concern at all for
the home gardener up north. Our winters kill the rust for good and unless
you import new daylilies with rust every year, it's not an issue here. For
that matter, I don't know anybody here on Long Island who's had daylily rust
in the past 2 years and many of us have 500 or more different daylilies.

Children's gardens though, that's a passion and I'd be glad to write about
those for you!

Melanie Vassallo
melaniev@optonline.net








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page