Kids and Gardens: Creating Garden Art for Your Family Vegetable Garden

You don't have to just think of weeds and bugs when you look at your garden. Enlist your kids to help in decorating it and using the materials (plants and vegetables) for family art projects.

Besides planting colorful flowers around the garden, and creating fun bean and pea vine sculptures with careful trellis placement - you can do all sorts of fun things to spruce up the backyard vegetable garden.

Garden Mosaics

You can create mosaics to be used as steps and decorations throughout the garden with a few simple materials. Get a shoebox and cut it down so that it is 1 - 2 inches deep.

Into the shoebox you'll pour Plaster of Paris (follow the instructions for preparing the plaster on it's box). Then have the kids ready to decorate the tile with whatever small bits of things and materials they want to use. Broken mirrors (help the kids with handling these obviously), small toys, plastic magnets, colorful stones, and whatever else you can gather together. Press the bits into the Plaster of Paris - wait for it to dry and then peel the cardboard off.

You could even have the kids decorate the tiles with sticks, seeds, flowers, and leaves found in the garden and the yard. Keep in mind that these things will only last for so long exposed to the elements - but when they are gone, the tile should still have their imprints which can then be painted.

Place the mosaic tiles throughout the garden creating steps and walkways.

Scarecrows

Every good garden needs a scarecrow. And the great thing about a scarecrow is that it can be as simple or as complex as you and your child would like.

It could be a few wooden planks nailed together, painted brightly and decorated with fabric and cloth to move around in the wind.

Or you could do a more classic scarecrow and place them in the garden in funny positions - or leave it slightly modifiable so that your child can change the position every so often.

Making signs for the different vegetables in the garden can serve duel purposes as you can have your child paint the sign and decorate it with pin-wheels or flapping fabric and cloth to serve as mini-scarecrows.

These are a few examples of garden art that you can do with your child right in your own backyard. The great thing about backyard vegetable gardens is that they really do provide multiple kinds of resources for your family. Great vegetables, quality time in the form of art projects, and plenty of family time weeding!