Top 5 Garden Activities For You And Your Family This Summer
With the always unpredictable British weather, it is important that you get outside and enjoy time in your garden with your family over the summer. To give you some outdoor inspiration, we have put together a list of garden activities for you to try with the whole family.
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Plant a Garden
While not everybody has green fingers, there are plenty of plants that are quite hardy and resistant and can be planted almost anywhere. Try potatoes in a compost sack or plant some strawberries to quickly enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Planting wildflower gardens is an easy way to bring a pop of colour into your garden and will become a haven for bees and other insects. You can combine this with creating butterfly houses and leaving small log piles or rockeries alone to become home to beetles and even hedgehogs.
Creating a part of your garden that is more natural and less regimented will give your family the freedom to be creative and will also benefit our environment too!
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Camp out in the Garden
This is a great way to enjoy your garden and get the whole family outdoors. If you have never taken your children camping, it is also an excellent way to see how they would react – without straying too far from your creature comforts.
Pitch a tent in the garden, grab a torch and tell ghost stories under the canvas. Or, why not use a firepit to sing songs around, and toast marshmallows?
If your children are a bit older, they might like to have a sleepover with a couple of their friends – and camping in the garden will reduce the noise (and potentially the mess).
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Water Fight!
A universal truth about children is that while they may not enjoy bathing/showering, all children love to play outside in water. Whether it is jumping in muddy puddles, or using water pistols, water games are fun and exciting.
Why not organise a water fight? Consider using water pistols, or a hose. If you want to throw water balloons, make sure to choose one that is biodegradable, or at least be sure to pick up any remnants to avoid littering and pollution.
How about a paddling pool? These are relatively inexpensive, and some can be inflated in seconds! Do make sure to always supervise your child around water, accidents can happen in a second.
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Create an Obstacle Course
Test the mettle of your family by creating a crazy obstacle course. Skipping ropes, footballs and cones, climbing equipment, slides and even the paddling pool can all be turned into a back-garden version of It’s a Knockout.
Create a course, time everyone round it, and celebrate the winner of your family Olympics!
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Make a Den
You cannot guarantee the weather. At some point, it is going to rain. But this doesn’t mean that the fun must stay inside! Building a treehouse or a den is an excellent family activity – but if you lack the skills to build one yourself, then why not ‘convert’ your gazebo into a secret den for the kids?
The only limit here is your imagination! Will it be a castle surrounded by a moat, where a prince and a princess rule the kingdom? Or is it a tower imprisoning a young woman, guarded by a fierce dragon? Maybe it is a secret clubhouse, or a pirate hideout. Wherever the imagination of your children takes them, repurposing your gazebo as a den makes perfect sense. You could add blankets, snacks and a portable DVD player to make a cinema!
Having fun in your garden can mean changing the design, layout or function of certain areas