let the children play :: in the garden

Recently I came across the blog let the children play. I’ve enjoyed seeing their ideas of children playing outside, but I hadn’t really taken any specific actions to set up play areas in our new yard. Basically I let the boys find their own spots to play and let them create their own worlds. Recently they found a wide patch of dirt, conveniently within easy site of the kitchen window, so I could safely watch them play. At first they used it as a sandbox of sorts then the other week they suddenly turned their casual dirt/truck spot into a place of hard work. They spent days out there, all day long, hard at play. Running to go get shovels, then water, then bricks. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but I let them play uninterrupted as best I could.

Finally after two or three days they were ready for their big reveal, a gardenia garden! They had planted both gardenias they’d rescued from our old house and brought over, with gardenias that needed rescuing here and planted them all together with brick lined paths. Each plant is decorated with feathers, rocks and well, dump trucks of course. Landscape gardeners or not, boys will be boys.