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Sow the seeds of a lifelong love for nature by introducing your little ones to these playful and rewarding projects with plants.
Kids will get a kick out of completing these tactile, all-season activities that merge imagination, creativity, botany and a little bit of practical magic. And you also don’t need acres of garden to dig in – if you have a sunny windowsill, you’re good to go.
With an emphasis on upcycling and sustainability, each of these easy projects is designed to encourage children to engage with nature, not tech.
As well as the fun of getting their hands dirty, the bigger reward lies in watching something grow that they have nurtured themselves, thereby encouraging them to care for and appreciate all forms of life.
IDEA 1: Bean There
Germinating beans with cotton wool, water and a bit of sunshine is a classic project for budding horticulturalists. It’s an especially appealing activity for younger children thanks to how quickly the bean grows.
* You will need
- Dried beans (broad beans, sugar beans (aka red speckled beans) and butter beans all work well)
- Cotton wool
- A glass container
- A sunny windowsill
* Instructions
- Place a layer of cotton wool in the bottom of a small Mason jar or other clear glass container such as an old jam or mustard jar.
- Slip your dried beans in on the sides so that kids can have a clear view of the day-to-day changes.
- Place another thin layer of cotton wool on top of the beans and gently press down
- Wet – but do not soak – the cotton wool
- Place on a sunny windowsill and wait for the magic to happen. The beans should start to germinate after about three days
TIPS
- Water the cotton as and when it feels dry to the touch.
- When the sprouts are around 20cm tall they can be transferred, cotton wool included, to a planter or into the ground.
- Beans love to climb: support them on a beanpole, trellis or bamboo or wooden frames.
IDEA 2: Stalking on Eggshells
This cracking idea recycles egg shells, transforming them from kitchen refuse into nutrient-rich eco-containers for growing flowers from seed.
* You will need
- Cleaned and dry eggshell halves
- Egg carton
- Potting soil
- Teaspoon
- Spray-bottle filled with water
- A long needle or pin
- Flower seeds such as marigolds, cosmos, cornflowers, nasturtiums, pansies or sweet peas
* Instructions
- Crack the eggs and pour the yolk and white into a bowl for cooking.
- Rinse eggshell halves well, making sure to remove the fine membrane, and leave to dry.
- Using a long needle, firmly but carefully poke a hole in the bottom of the shell from the inside. This is for drainage.
- Lightly spray the eggshells with a fine mist of water.
- Fill the shells about 3/4 of the way with potting soil using a teaspoon and level out with your fingers.
- Gently press a few seeds into the soil using the instructions on the packet as a guide to suitable depth.
- Place each egg container back into the carton.
- Place in a sunny spot and wait for them to sprout.
- Water with a spray bottle accordingly.
- Once the seedlings are large enough, gently crack the eggshell containers and replant them into a pot or container in a place they will thrive.
- Continue caring for the seedlings according to packet instructions until they bloom.
TIPS
- Once you’ve emptied the contents of the eggshell for use in cooking, rinse the shells and boil them up for a few minutes. This removes any remaining egg residue plus hardens the shells to prevent breakage. * Make sure you have poked your small drainage hole in the bottom of the shell before boiling.
- Remove any small bits of shell before potting with soil so that the opening is not too jagged.
- Try broccoli, radish, carrot and tomato seeds for homegrown veggies.
IDEA 3: Making a Scene
Inspired by the terrarium trend and museum dioramas, there’s great fun to be had in planting up a clear container with succulents, moss and plastic wildlife.
* You will need
- An assortment of glass or clear plastic/acrylic containers: terrariums, vases, medium to large Mason jars as well as small fish bowls or tanks.
- Child-friendly, spike-free succulents.
- Spray-bottle filled with water.
- Small pebbles as well as decorative stones.
- Potting soil.
- Sphagnum moss (available from garden and DIY retailers).
- Plastic animal toys.
* Instructions
- Place a generous layer of small stones or pebbles in the bottom of the container.
- Top with soil, leaving a few inches of space at the top for plants (depending on their size) and small plastic toys.
- Plant the succulents and create scenes using the toys and moss.
- Spray with a fine mist of water as needed.
TIPS
- A terrarium makes a great DIY gift for little friends: pop a suitable container, several small succulents and a mini spray-bottle into a gift box along with soil, pebbles and plastic toys sorted into separate Ziploc bags. Don’t forget hand-written instructions.
- There’s no limit to how creative you can get: think colourful gravel, fairies and toadstools and dinosaurs.
- Before assembling your terrarium, mark the inside of the jar with dots of glow-in-the-dark paint to up the cool factor.
IDEA 4: Potty Personalities
Let kids decorate their own plastic pots with cute faces and then fill them with succulents and indoor plants to resemble funky hairstyles.
* You will need
- Plain white plastic pots
- Succulents or indoor plants
- Soil
- Permanent markers
* Instructions
- Give the kids their own pots and let them have free reign in drawing faces with a permanent marker.
- Help them fill the pots with soil and their chosen plants.
- Leave the potty personalities indoors or on the balcony in a good spot and let them take care of the watering (and cutting back, if necessary).
TIPS
- Avoid succulents with small thorns that can stick in little hands.
- Herbs such as chives, parsley, rosemary, thyme and basil also make for funny-looking hairdos and can be left on the kitchen windowsill for regular trimming to use in cooking or munching.
- Older children can use ceramic markers on terracotta pots to design pretty patterns or more elaborate drawings.
IDEA 5: Growth Spurts
Let children observe the magic of a how a cutting grows its roots – a quick way to propagate plants for free and a valuable lesson in appreciating just how awesome nature really is.
* You will need
- A sterilised, medium-sized glass bottle.
- Cuttings from healthy plants that will root easily without nursery-bought rooting hormones. Try species such as African violet, geranium, mint, impatiens, philodendron and elephant bush (Portulacaria afra).
* Instructions
- Help your kids cut a 7-15cm section of stem from a healthy-looking plant by making a clean, angled snip above a leaf node.
- Let them remove leaves from the bottom one-third or half of the cutting so you are left with a bare stalk and a few leaves on the top section.
- Put the cutting in the bottle of water, submerging only the leafless stem.
- Place the bottle in a place that gets partial sunlight and that is neither too hot or cold.
- Once the roots are several centimetres long, the cutting is ready to transplant into soil.
TIPS
- Keep the water topped up and replace once a week, or sooner if it becomes cloudy.
- Let the kids feel like mini scientists by displaying their cuttings in test tube vases or beakers.
- Upcycled chutney, ketchup and glass soda bottles filled with cuttings, displayed en masse from a metal frame, will create an eye-catching decorative element.
IDEA 6: Roots & Shoots
Put your zero waste lifestyle aspirations into practice by showing kids that it’s entirely possible – and super-simple – to regrow new, organic vegetables from scraps.
* You will need
- Small glass container, deep dish or a drinking glass
- Small pots
- Soil
- Garlic cloves
- The thick base of a celery
* Instructions
To regrow celery:
- Once you have used all the stalks on your bunch of celery, place the base in a container, deep dish or glass with clean, room-temperature water.
- Leave on the windowsill or somewhere that the base will get gentle sunlight.
- New leaves should start to grow within five days.
- Once the leaves are a little bigger, you can transfer your celery base into a pot filled with potting soil.
- Plant the base in the soil with the leaf tips exposed and place in a spot that gets generous sunlight.
- Water regularly.
- After a week or two you should see stalks start to emerge.
To regrow garlic:
- Try to buy organic garlic to begin with. This should ensure that it has not been chemically treated which often prevents sprouting.
- Fill a pot with potting soil and plant cloves (sprouting or not) 1-2cm down, so they are covered.
- Leave on a sunny windowsill or spot on the balcony or in the garden.
- Water regularly, but do not soak the soil or the cloves will rot.
- Your garlic sprouts should start to push through the soil after about a month.
- After several months you should notice hard, grass-like leaves growing from the centre of the plant.
- Once these start to curl and brown, your garlic is ready to harvest.
TIPS
- In the initial stages of growing celery from the base, keep the water that it is in clear and fresh.
- The process of regrowth can be repeated indefinitely for both vegetables.
- Spring onions (also known as green onions) and chives can be regrown by cutting them about 10cm from the base of the root and standing them in a glass of clean water on a sunny windowsill.
IDEA 8: Spell Check
Kids can keep track of what they’re growing (and you get to slip in a little spelling lesson along the way) by crafting cute washi tape flags and jotting down plant names onto them.
* You will need
- Rolls of plain washi tape
- Scissors
- Markers
- Wooden takeaway chopsticks or long kebab sticks
* Instructions
- Cut a piece of washi tape to the length you’d like your flag to be.
- Wrap that piece of washi in half around the top of the chopstick or kebab stick.
- Trim further if it’s too long and cut a small triangle out of the centre to make a flag shape.
- Write down the name of the herb or plant and stick the chopstick into the soil so that the flag sits above the top leaves.
TIPS
- If your child can’t yet read, come up with a colour code together that will help identify the different plants: red for tomatoes, green for lettuce, orange for rosemary, yellow for mint, and so on.
- Vary the shapes of the flags for interest.
IDEA 9: A Vine Romance
You say potato, I say beautiful indoor plant… The trailing, vine-like leaves of a sweet potato make for a whimsical and unusual addition to your collection of indoor plants. Kids will take pride in knowing that they have grown something so unusual and, quite frankly, cool.
* You will need
- A few healthy, wrinkle-free sweet potatoes – even better if little sprouts are beginning to shoot out of the sweet potato ‘eyes’.
- Clean glass jars and bottles with wide enough necks to place the potatoes into.
* Instructions
- Fill the jars almost to the top with water and place the bottom of the sweet potato into it so that it is resting in the water.
- Keep at least the top one-third of the potato out of the water.
- Place in a sunny or semi-sunny spot and wait for the magic to happen.
- Vines with stems will begin to sprout in a few weeks.
TIPS
- Maintain the health of your sweet potato vines and the mother plant by keeping the water in your container clean. Change once a week or when it becomes murky.
- Snip off any vines that have started to brown and wither.
Text: Mandy Allen Photographs: Warren Heath/ Bureaux
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