“Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.” ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, 1897
A while back, just as Spring was arriving here in western Canada, a spied a most beautiful idea on The Imagination Tree. Anna had built the loveliest sensory garden for her girls. Right away I knew this was something I wanted for my own two smalls. For so long, our backyard has been pretty dismal. A little garden would be just the thing to give it a little boost.
I purchased some wooden bendable fencing from our Canadian Tire store and dug up the grass where I would put the garden. It was very plain and boring in the beginning, but full of so much potential!We couldn’t plant anything right away because it was still too cold, so we set about adding all the other details. We hung watering cans from the fence post, we filled the garden with dirt, and I hung an old window for sweet peas to grow up around, and a metal pot hanger from IKEA for loose parts and playthings…In our pots we have tractors, plastic bugs, toy frogs, and glass rocks. Our backyard hens thought it was a really great place to visit…Coco decided on a bird bath which we found at Winners Home Sense for $12…Once the weather finally warmed up, Mr. Pancakes and I went to the garden centre and I let him choose whichever plants he wanted in the garden. He was very, very choosy and it took us quite some time to get things decided upon! He wanted to make sure he had all the primary colours, some “smelling good” plants, and some strawberries. We got home and he went straight to planting…Coco had already placed terracotta pots for hidey holes, metal planters, ceramic birds, and a flapping cardinal for some colour, so all Mr. Pancakes had to do was decide where all the plants should go…The peppermint he chose was planted behind the hidey hole so it would grow like a little den of leaves for the bird…He planted his strawberry patch near the edge so no one would step on it…And Coco planted the pretty lobelia all over the little garden patch…They planted sweet peas by the seed all along the back, and they are growing up nicely now…Coco and Mr. Pancakes spend the warmer evenings out in their garden playing and watching things grow…
This little garden is only the beginning of what we have going in on in our backyard now! Stay tuned each week for something new that we’ve added to our outdoor play space!
Thanks for stopping by!
~Arlee, Small Potatoes
p.s. Just for something a little different, all today’s photos were made with the app Hipstamatic on the iPhone5.