Time to Get in the Garden

Spring has officially sprung my friends! It may seem overly dramatic, but words cannot express my excitement over finally seeing the sun and a little bit of warmth for a change. How about you? What does Spring mean for you? For me it means a lot of outside activities start, including hiking, playing outside with the kids and gardening.

Do you garden? I do and I love it, which means that much of my personal time is spent doing just that. I have both a vegetable garden and a flower garden and I have a couple rules that I follow for both. This being said, I first and foremost make this a family event. My husband joins in on occasion (gardening really isn’t his thing, but family time is), and my children are involved in my gardening from start to finish and for both my vegetable garden as well as our flower beds.

Let's get back to those rules I follow:

For my vegetable garden:

• Raised bed. I actually use a raised bed garden here. I actually have plenty of space in my yard (over an acre), but my best growing space doesn’t have the best soil so I have created a raised bed garden using cinder blocks.
• Only plant what we use. It may seem obvious but I only plant vegetables that my entire family will eat. I hate wasting food, but I especially hate the idea of wasting food that my family and I have worked hard to grow.
• We plant only what grows well in our area. Here we are very successful growing zucchini, green beans, tomatoes and peppers. We always plant lots of these. We occasionally add others in, but these are our go-to vegetables each year.

For my flower garden:

Let’s be real here. My flower garden is just for looks. I enjoy the therapy that gardening offers, but I really work on my flower garden because I enjoy being surrounded by a beautiful garden and a relaxing and fun environment. We create this for our family in several ways:

• We plant lots of different flowers. I am all about variety. I love the variety of different flowers throughout the garden. Instead of just one or two different flower types, I get to look at 10+ different varieties. Additionally, I put a lot of focus on the flower scents. I love a pretty smelling garden of course, but I don’t like super strong smells and my daughter has allergies, so we need to keep the fragrance to a minimum.
• Research. I have spent quite a bit of time researching what flowers grow well together and what type of flowers grow well in my location.
• Decorate. That’s right. I know that it is a garden full of beautiful flowers, but I also like to add in some decorations that personalize it a bit. I like to add in hanging flower pots and decorative hooks for hanging them. I also like to put up cute, decorative fencing to create transition spaces between some of the flower beds. My favorite decorating feature though, is the personalized decorations that my children have decorated and used. If you like the idea of letting your kids create the decor in your garden, here are a couple of examples of the types of kid decor that we have throughout our garden (several of which you can get right here at Sassafrass):
  • Paint Your Own Garden Fairy - most garden fairies are invisible, but not this one! girls will love making her beautiful with the enclosed paints, then placing her in the garden for good luck. kit includes ceramic fairy, 4 non toxic paints and a brush. fairy measure 6" tall.
  • Paint Your Own Fairy Garden Set - decorate these fairies then tuck them in your garden so they can folic under the flowers by night! includes: 2 fairies, fairy house, paintbrush & 6 paints.
  • Paint Your Own Garden Gnome - gnomes are thought to bring good luck to your garden. these gnomes are especially lucky because they will be painted by a very special child! gnome include paintbrush & 8 paints. gift boxed.
  • Paint Your Own Garden Owl - whooo wants to paint? this owl is not only a hoot for the garden, but is so much fun to paint. owl include paintbrush & 8 paints. gift boxed.
  • Paint Your Own Garden Bunny - hop, hop, hop! our garden bunny will make any garden very hoppy! bunny includes paintbrush & 8 pastel paints. bunny is 7" tall.
  • You can also do an online search for Paint Your Own Stepping Stone kits like this one I spotted on Amazon. We have several of these types in our garden and they are super cute.

If you want to order some of these adorable kits, you can save 10% off Garden Mini Fairy and Gnome set when you use promo code 10 at checkout.