Shapes In A Garden Create A Colorful Outdoor Activity

Shapes in a garden or landscape area are a wonderful way to have children or adults express their own personalities. It is also a great learning tool, as well as providing a special classroom or family time. There are so many different plant specimens available for all of us to use for this type of garden. You can do a small area and plant just flowers, shrubs, herbs, or vegetables. A little while back, a visitor to this site wanted some ideas of what to do outside in a garden area for planting vegetables with two small children. You can take any style garden, and create different shapes for everyone to enjoy. Tomatoes planted in circle, along with a straight line of green beans or pole beans, a triangle of corn and a square of carrots can produce a delicious vegetable garden. The area you plant can be any size and even a container garden. The first step in doing shapes in a garden is to talk about the plants everyone wants. If the children are small, think of their favorite color or vegetable. Decide on the different shapes and prepare your outside area. Below are a couple of ideas using Marigolds and Gerber Daisies. I took the flowers and formed a circle, triangle and a square. This will give you an idea of how to arrange the plants. They are still in their containers and will be put out shortly into a combination garden of herbs, flowers and vegetables.

Triangle With Flowers

A triangle is done exactly how you would draw one on a piece of paper. Get creative using different plant specimens. Combine favorite colors and forms and give your children or students the opportunity to express their own personality outdoors.

Square With Flowers

A square is another possibility. If you noticed, the flowers looked closed in. Once they are planted in the ground, you can make the square bigger. There are many different flower varieties you can use. In the gallery of plants section, take a look at different specimens you could use to create shapes.

Flowers Make A Circle

Full Circle With Flowers

A circle is another option for this type of garden. You can do a simple circle or get a little more creative and put another variety of flower in the center. This will give you a mass planting effect.

This learning activity does not have to be expensive. It can be done with any plant material and a little creativity. This type of design is called designing within a design. In the landscape article section there is a page that talks about designing within a design. This is a very simplistic way to construct a great learning project. You can actually go beyond a basic form, and produce your very own character. This is one of the things that is done in places like Disneyland, Disney World and other beautiful botanical gardens. These master designers create figures out of different shapes in mass planting.

Go ahead and plan a small or large area, and create forms and figures with flowers, shrubs, herbs or vegetables. Plan, prepare, plant and enjoy the benefits of not only constructing a garden, but taking the steps of teaching and working together outdoors.