How to Put Some “Spring” in Your (Door)step

With the 85°+ temps we’ve been having the past few days around here, I’m itching to get some planting done outside. I love gardening and my kids LOVE to be outside and LOVE to help in the garden, but since I’m not quite ready to put in the vegetable garden yet, we’ve started with something smaller – the planters by our front door.  Putting flowers in your planters by your front door or filling your patio planters with blooms and greenery instantly adds color and beauty to your doorstep, which is especially nice for all of you who live in colder climates where Spring doesn’t seem quite so “right-around-the-corner” as it does here.

The nice thing about doing this with the little ones is that they can see the “fruits” of their work instantly. (Gardening from seed is also a great thing to do with little ones because it teaches patience – but today we’re all about instant gratification!)  As an added bonus, for those of you (us) who prefer to garden without the help of little hands, this can satisfy their desire to help with the “garden” and still leave you to work on the edible garden later on.

So let’s get to it! Here’s how we put together our planters for Spring:

We hit up our local Home Depot (or maybe it was Lowe’s) for some colorful (and inexpensive) flowers – and hit the jackpot (the flower jackpot, anyway…if there is such a thing). They were clearing out a bunch of their early Spring flowers, so we paid so little for so much beauty! (They look a little wilty here, but they perked back up after getting planted and drinking some water.)

I chose to keep some of the plants that were left from our winter planting – the geraniums did especially well, even after being transplanted a time or 2.  We cleaned the dead stuff out, took the dead stuff off of the plants we were going to keep, and started digging…

…with our hands, of course! Potting soil (the kind of soil that’s best for planters) is super easy to dig in, so it’s great for even the littlest helpers because they really can help. Also, my littlest one isn’t a dirt eater, so this was a great way for her to garden with me, but if you’ve got a dirt eater or an “I-put-every-object-small-enough-into-my-mouth” type of child, then you might have to wait until they’re a bit older for this little activity.

We put the biggest/tallest flowers towards the middle.

These ranunculus (one of my favorite flowers) were a little root-bound, so we tore at the roots a little and loosened the soil up before putting them into our hole that we dug. In general, I wouldn’t buy root-bound plants, but since these aren’t meant to be permanent (and they were so cheap), I figured they’d look good long enough, so I got them anyway. Even though some looked particularly sad….

But it turned out alright in the end. We worked outside in the beautiful weather…

…with beautiful kids (some gardened, some took pictures)…

…and beautiful flowers…

…but I knew it was time to be done when a certain photographer started shooting photos like this one (of people’s backsides – mine included – but I’m not sharing that one) 😉 and giggling (the naughty giggle)…

To read about our vegetable garden – click here next!

Now it’s your turn! Go plant some flowers and bring on Spring!