Fun Spring Garden Activities for the Whole Family

We love March. It’s a wonderful month because the sun’s starting to shine, the evenings are getting longer and everyone smiles more! This means summer is on its way and we’ll soon be swapping our wellies for flip flops and brollies for sun glasses! While we’re stretching our necks towards the beautiful sunshine like hungry sunflowers, we find ourselves sitting in a rather wild and dishevelled back garden that we’d completely forgotten exists and looks far less prepared for the summer than we are. 

So now is the perfect time to re-acquaint ourselves with our overzealous bushes and indulge on some fun spring garden activities. For many, this seems like a rather gruelling job that’s tiring and time-consuming, but it can actually be transformed into lots of fun spring garden activities and games for the whole family. We’ve listed a few of our favourite activities below for you to try with your family, making your garden more welcoming while having lots of fun at the same time. These activities include some arty crafty ideas for the little ones to enjoy, such as painting plant pots and customizing vegetable tags, making them perfect spring garden activities.

Tidying up is the first step towards having a habitable garden and is a great opportunity for a family competition! All grownups and little ones can begin with their very own bucket and gardening gloves, then everyone sweeps up as many leaves and pulls up as many weeds as possible in an agreed time (depending on the size of your garden) and collects them in the buckets. The person with the fullest bucket at the end is the winner. (It’s a good idea to show the little ones what weeds are before you begin otherwise your prize roses may end up looking rather sorry for themselves at the bottom of the bucket). This is a fun incentive for clearing the lawn in a very short amount of time, making it one of the enjoyable spring garden activities.

While you’re mowing the lawn and pruning the plants, the little ones can decorate their own plant pots ready to plant their very own flowers. Lay out a blanket on the grass with lots of newspaper on top for protection (as this is likely to get messy!) along with a couple of lightweight terracotta plant pots for each little one and a selection of emulsion paints. We recommend using a few tester pots from your local DIY store to save pennies as this will give them a range of colours to explore, or you can use leftover pots from decorating projects. 

This is a wonderful chance for the children to get creative and explore their imaginations and engage in fun spring garden activities. These colourful designs can feature anything they like, whether it’s gardening-inspired themes such as flowers, leaves and trees or even their favourite animals! They can also include their names to make them completely personalised. 

There are lots of flowers to choose from, but we’ve picked our favourites based on them being perfect for beginners, ready to sew now and easy for little ones to join in and help take care of them. Tagetes patula ‘Tall Scotch Prize’ is a French Marigold with beautiful multi-coloured petals that make them bright and exciting. They are great for bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects. 

The little ones will love watching the wildlife enjoy their flowers. Antirrhinum ‘Scarlet’ is a lovely blend of colours and is also appealing for pollinating insects. It requires little maintenance and can be grown in pots. Calendula officinalis ‘Neon’ can also be grown in the children’s decorated pots, the buds open into big and bright orange petals and the petals can even be eaten in salads!

It’s the perfect time of year to sew vegetable seeds and the youngsters will love watching them grow into yummy vegetables. Making a vegetable patch can be simple, fun and will bring your garden to life, as long as you choose suitable vegetables for your garden. We’ve picked out a few different vegetables below that are perfect for children to experiment with as they are easy to grow and maintain, and can be sewn outside without needing to be covered. 

Click on each vegetable below for more information on how to plant and maintain them. This is provided by Sarah Raven, BBC presenter and award winning author. Potato ‘Nicola’ Tomato ‘Red Grape Sugar Plum’ Broad Bean ‘Stereo’ The next activity in preparation for an exciting vegetable patch is to make customised vegetable tags. 

This will make planting vegetables even more fun! The children can write the vegetable names on the tags and decorate them with lots of colours and patterns. They’ll love having their very own personalised vegetable patch - it’s the perfect incentive for taking care of the vegetables and learning about how they grow through engaging spring garden activities. Simply lay out a blanket with a selection of wooden blocks or small pieces of slate. If they’re going to be decorating slate, white chalk is best, or acrylic and emulsion paints for wood. 

Decorating wood may be preferable as chalk may wash off in the rain if the vegetables aren’t covered. The little ones can then write the names of the vegetables they’ll be planting on the tags and use their creativity to add fun decorations, enhancing their experience of spring garden activities. They’ll have lots of fun planting these alongside their very own vegetable seeds, and it’ll be very exciting for them to see these little seeds grow into yummy vegetables!