Looking for a fun way to involve the kids in your gardening activities?  Here’s a project you can do together that lets the little ones leave their mark on this year’s fall vegetable garden.

Just take two parts adventure and mix it with one part art project and you have a lot more than colorful stone garden markers.  You have proud artists and budding gardeners who have a ‘stake’ in this year’s garden.

Part One:

First.  Gather the stones.  Depending on where you live, you may be able to find these on a nature walk, along a lake shore beach, or on a hiking trail.  If your time is limited or you don’t have easy access to a natural area, you could visit TLC Garden Centers to purchase small, flat landscape stones suitable for painting.  Second, spend time with the children talking about what types of vegetables you want to plant his year and let them help you shop for starter plants or seeds.

Part Two:

All you need are rocks, a selection of acrylic paints, small artist paint brushes, and some creativity.  For smaller hands, a variety of colored permanent markers could do the trick as well.

Each rock can identify a specific vegetable in words, a drawing, or both.  It is also a good idea to coat the rocks with a non-toxic all-purpose sealer when the paint is dry for extra weather resistance.

As the plants start to sprout, the adventure continues by allowing you to teach the children the tasks of watering, weeding, and harvesting the garden.

TLC Garden Centers are proud to carry Proven Winners plants.  Proven Winners plants are unsurpassed in terms of flowering, growth habit, disease resistance, and garden performance.  Proven Winners is consistently working to refine and improve their offerings for the North American garden in using the best in new plant and production materials.  For more information on Proven Winners click here.