Kid Garden Project
There is a park near our home with planters next to some benches. It’s an inclusive play park, so it is fenced and wheelchair accessible. The planters have looked a bit sad since before we moved here though, and I saw a place I could help my community.
My initial planning was to find out as much as I could about who was in charge of the space, and how I could best support them in getting the planters planted. I got a bit carried away, and also came up with some dream ideas about what the space could be used for. I also measured everything and calculated how much soil we would need. Here’s my initial planning list of all the things I would maybe plant here, and some pros and cons that I could think of for each one.
Natives
Epilobium canum, California Fuchsia
- Pros - environmental friendly, less maintenance
- Cons - no personal experience, not sure where to buy these
Sensory perennials
lavender, chives, roses, geranium
- Pros - low maintenance, interactive for kids
- Cons - potentially irritating to some people
Edible
nasturtium, violets, chives, mint, basil, sage, oregano, peas in the center on a pole, strawberries, marigolds, gladiolus, asparagus
- Pros - non-toxic, interactive
- Cons - insects, expensive to replace/maintain, more water
Play garden Mini Worlds
car track, fairy houses, construction zone, Dino habitat (lots of shady leaves)
- Pros - fun, interactive
- Cons - messy, high maintenance
Annual community plans
- Pros - community engagement, sense of owner
- Cons - someone might not care for their planter, a lot to organize
Flowers
snapdragons, sunflowers, tulips, anemones, dianthus, sweet peas
- Pros - color, U-pick bouquets
- Cons - high maintenance, potential poisoning
Succulent
- Pros - low water, low maintenance
- Cons - trendy
I knew the planters were receiving summer water, because last year I noticed the soakers inside were functioning, and we grew a lot of weeds in them that year. I sent an email about the park to an employee at the military housing office, because I discovered during a resident council meeting that that park was owned by the Air Force, and she was capable of getting maintenance requests through for it. She was encouraging, and she added my friend Jillian (our privatized resident housing advocate) and another person I didn’t know from the Environmental part of the civil engineering squadron.
That was in mid-October of 2023. Jillian let me know it would need to be self-funded, because there were no funds allocated for it. I tried to find out who was responsible for the sprinklers, and my initial contact said she would have to do some digging and get back to me, but she never did. Since I didn’t know if there would be consistent water, I started thinking more about low/no water in summer plants. Also, I went back to the park at this point, and there were new flyers up at the locked message board that I had asked about using to put up a flyer about the effort to maybe get some funding and volunteers from the community of park goers. It was a flyer for a trunk or treat event at the MFRC, so I knew that someone there had the key for that. I called them and asked if I could use the space for a flyer for this project, and they said that would be great.
Jillian emailed me in December and offered to be my main working partner on the project since my other contact had a lot going on. She had a list of questions for me, and I answered them. It was good to work through some logistical things I hadn’t written down yet (e.g. maintenance schedule, point of contact and communication methods). Around this time, the park was vandalized. Someone wrote some cruel things with a sharpie on the back of one of the accessible swings. The person who found it posted it of Facebook, and people suggested ways to clean it off. When I went next, it had been cleaned, but this did reinforce my belief that the planters were needed. I think when things are well maintained, people feel less inclined to tear them apart.
Jillian discovered, through some digging, a contact for the sprinklers, and we emailed him, but he didn’t reply. Jillian said she had a different group of people in charge of contracts she thought she could try. In April, she let me know that she found a contact of the person in charge of the sprinklers. I was so happy. I called him and asked a few questions I had had about them. He explained where the controller box is, and how they set the schedule of watering. Knowing I had a contact for the water, I felt confident we could plant. Jillian sent me a sample document of the formatting used for a Memorandum for Record in the Air Force, and I wrote a draft based on it that we could send to the people concerned for this project. Jillian did a lot more talking and contacting people for me, and by the end of the month we had a soft greenlight. They also said we didn’t need to send an official memo for it, so we were ready to plant.
I planted up one of the planters that weekend on my own with some plants from my garden that I knew from personal experience could survive almost anything. The plants were free for me, I used some compost from a free compost event that the city of Fairfield did at the Dunnell Nature Center to amend the soil that was already in the planter, and I added an extra bag of soil and then mulch. Total cost at this point was a lot of time and about $30. I was still concerned about what kids would do. I took more before pictures too, because it looks different in the summer.
It was hot, so I went every couple of days to give extra water to limit transplant shock. Every time I went, one of the geraniums would be pulled out by the roots, but left on the surface. I picked them up and stuck them back in the ground, and trusted in their hardiness. I ended up losing one of them, but the other two made it just fine. The asparagus ferns were never pulled out, probably because they are a little prickly. Here it is about a month later.
Since it was so hot, I decided to wait out the summer to plant the next two, and I still needed to make my flyer. I was struggling with how to word it. I came across this garden at a library nearby, and I loved this.
I I finally came up with a design. I kept it really simple. Originally I had planned to make a Facebook group or a Discord channel to build up a community and communicate, but I decided to stick with email, since it’s not a huge project, and it was even less maintenance that I had anticipated. I printed it at the library a couple days ago for 25€ but I haven’t brought it over to put in the message board yet.
On the 12th we planted up the second of the three for my birthday. It wasn’t on my birthday (it was way too hot then), but I thought of it that way. My kids all helped with the soil replacement, planting, mulching, and watering. We had too much fun to take pictures, but I did get a couple when I went back with my youngest to water while the other two were at school. We were a little more ambitious this time with a strawberry, a petunia, a calibrachoa, and a citronella. Total cost was about $60 this time. I was happy to donate that to our community; it has already been well worth the effort and funds.
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