So you've started planting your garden! Hooray!
All the little seeds are sitting in the ground waiting to germinate and sprout into little seedlings.
And when they do, can you remember what you planted?
It's sometimes hard to remember what you've planted in the first few gardens, especially when you've had a very eager and helpful little friend popping seeds all over the place.
Thats where little plant markers and signs can come in handy!
Most garden centres will sell sets of ten or so. They come in plastic, or terracotta or wood or metal.
You write on them in sharpie or chalk.
You can even buy little kits that you can make your own out of air dry clay or chalkboard paint.
Or, you can have a little look around at home or out and about on adventures and see what you can come up with to use as little signs and markers to help you remember what it is you've planted.
Reusing and repurposing thighs in the garden is a wonderful way to show children that things don't have to be one use, that you don't always have to buy new things.
It's very nice to get a nice new pot for your nice new plants and pop in a nice new sign for them. But it doesn't send a sustainable message.
And one of the aims of us here at NewLeafEd is to encourage more sustainable ways of doing things.
So let's look at some ways that we can make a garden with some reused and repurposed items.
There are so many things that you can use, and once you start thinking about it, you'll see that nearly anything can be used!
Any plastic container (think ice cream, milk bottle, dip container) can be washed, cut and written on in sharpie! From there you can attach it to a nice stick or pop instead straight in the pot or ground.
Again with plastic, all those ikea and kmart kids cutlery sets most of us have managed to collect and don't really use anymore. They're perfect for writing on and sticking straight in!
I dont know about you, but we seem to collect a lot (and I mean A LOT) of very nice shells and rocks when we go exploring. We make sure to not take too many and to take one's that no other creature is or could use; the shells with holes or the rocks that aren't hiding a lizard hole. And these are perfect for name tags! Use a sharpie or posca pen (paint pens used in the rock drop art you may have seen on social media or out and about!) to write what the plant is and pop it in!
Old trucks parked under a rosemary bush, barbie legs sticking out of the ground under a tomato, old bricks or pavers you've found under the house or buried in the yard. All those things and more can be reused and repurposed.
When we show the children around us the value in reusing things they carry that with them. They then see that you don't always need to buy a new thing, they learn to look around with the intention that things can be used more than once and for more than one purpose.
These are the thoughts and actions that have a lasting impact, that create lasting change. And it's with these thoughts and actions that they can hang the world for the better.
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