My kids love the mud. They love jumping in it. They love squishing their hands in it. Simply put, they love getting dirty (once upon a time my oldest hated it, but that’s another story). So when we set out to make a new raised garden bed, they wanted to get involved. The only problem?
We didn’t want them stomping down any new plants. That’s one of the reasons we decided to make them their very own mud garden. They could grow things in it, if they wanted. Or they could use it to make mud pies and stomp around, if they wanted. Not surprisingly, they chose to do both.
How to Make a Mud Garden For Your Kids
When we first set out to make a mud garden, I searched Pinterest for inspiration. But nearly everything that came up was for a mud kitchen. While, yeah, we wanted that too, we wanted to focus this particular project on a mud garden, otherwise known as a special garden space in the backyard strictly for the kids.
So, we decided to keep it super simple, starting with the design. Here’s everything we used:
- Branches to outline the garden
- Cardboard to kill the grass off underneath
- About four bags of topsoil
In our backyard, we had been collecting branches (and waiting for branch/refuse pickup to resume in our town). We used the biggest branches we had to form the four sides of the garden.
We then laid down cardboard to kill off any grass under the mud garden.
After that, the kids used their small wheelbarrows to help us fill the outdoor play space in with top soil. That’s it!
The kids do whatever they want in their very own mud garden, and they take that “task” seriously. We planted a couple flowers — and a carrot from the fridge — using their own gardening tools. We added some leftover seeds I had. But they’ve also spent a lot of time just digging and searching for worms. They’ve also doing plenty of stomping around in their bare feet.
They still help with our raised garden bed, for sure, but they love that they have a space of their own. And we do too.
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