Gardening is rewarding because of the food beauty, shade, and colors that excite our senses. But you can have fun gardening.
Are you kidding? It is hard work. So I thought I would investigate how to have fun gardening just so we can all look at our hard work from a different perspective.
Fun is different from the health benefits of gardening. You know what I mean. Benefits like better nutrients in the food. The exercise we get from gardening. Don’t forget the aesthetic beauty of our hard work and how gratifying it is to look at.
But Fun? When I think of fun I think of laughing out loud and feeling energized.
So here are some ideas.
How About a Little Friendly Competition?
One thing that will usually inspire and excite anyone is a little friendly competition.
How about a competition between you and another family member or friend. Pick out a particular plant or area of the garden. Set up a few rules, pick a start date, and get planting. I think it will be fun to watch how things progress. Of course, there may be a little ribbing and remarks as to who is winning and which is better.
Judging may be an obstacle as it will involve a third party. Best to maybe have a garden party and have guests do silent drop box voting. To make things even more interesting offer a prize for the winner.
Involve Your Children
It can be fun to involve your children and make a game out of your garden planning, preparation, planting, and maintenance. Here are few ideas on how to approach this.
Prepare your garden layout like it is a castle or village with plants being the village people.
Preparation can be building the village. Roads(rows), homes(planting holes), castles(trellises and covering structures)
Planting becomes new villagers or births occurring in the village.
Maintenance is where the real fun comes in for the kids. Make them the protector of the villages. They must maintain consistent watch over their village as a protector and maybe even avenger making sure certain enemies like undesirable pests are identified and destroyed. Battles must be fought to eradicate marauding invaders(weeds) with trusted tools and armor. These knights of the vegetable table must be vigilant and unrelenting in their quest to protect the villagers.
Name your plants and maybe weeds and bugs too. Use your imagination to name both the good and bad. Good names like Dolly, Angel, and Mary Gold will help you and your children care for your plants and add a different level of connection with nature. Discussions about their different personalities and preferences will give them an identity.
Now comes the part when we name the pests and weeds of the garden. Grass and weeds may become T-Rex or Darth Vader. This really helps me get in there and fight the battle. Bugs might become The Joker or Godzilla or Jaws.. This really helps when you are in the middle of battle in the middle of summer.
Everyone wants to be a hero.
Practice Jokes on Them
What better place to practice jokes than in your garden. Try to find some new jokes on the web or from a neighbor and practice them on your plants. They will definitely listen and definitely won’t respond but it will help you refine your skill. Huh??? At least while you are telling jokes and maybe thinking up new ones you are not thinking about the hard work you are doing.
Regardless, whether you are making a game out of it or telling jokes fun is mostly a state of mind that we choose to be in. If you decide to have fun, most likely you will. Maybe this article will help you begin to think of ways to have fun in your garden. It is one of the best places I can think of to spend a day and usually very rewarding.
We hope you have enjoyed this article and hope it has helped give you a new perspective. Feel free to visit our website for more informative articles on gardening and see our unique portable automatic irrigation drip system kits. There is also a free book available, “ 101 Ways to Save Water On Your Landscape”.
