Our Family Friendly Garden – The Finishing Touches

#collaborative post

If you follow my blog regularly, you will know that when we moved into our new home we undertook a pretty mammoth garden renovation project. Over the last 2 years, our garden has been converted from a dangerous building site with crumbling walls and decrepit out buildings, to a beautiful safe haven. A large open space where the children can run around and play, safe and secure, and the perfect party garden. I am so proud of our garden, and it is by far my favourite part of the house now – If only the inside was as big! 🙂

As Mum to two daughters, the family friendly elements of my garden are the areas I am the most proud of – here’s how we made the finishing touches work for us.

The Fairy Garden

Erin has such a creative imagination, and loves playing outside. When we introduced her to our outdoor magical fairy door she was absolutely besotted. We set it up whilst she was out at nursery, and so it was a lovely surprise for her to return to.

We applied the door at the base of a large silver birch tree, before adding additional decorations such as toadstools and wood bark surrounding the entrance. We then used log edging to create a little garden area and then let nature do it’s thing – there is something authentic about reaching behind leaves or the little ivy branches twirling around behind the house! For a touch of extra sparkle, we are considering adding some naked wire lighting to the trunk of the tree, creating a spiral of twinkly lights as if it was the fairy dust drifting off into the sunset!

The Play Area

When Erin’s second cousins came to our house for the first time a few weeks ago – one of the 7 year olds actually exclaimed “It’s practically a park!!!” on seeing our play area. Because our garden is so long, we could easily separate off an area which we converted into a soft landing play bark area. We bought rubber tyre chippings and spread this on an anti weed ground sheet, as we preferred the overall look of this to the rubber matting. We have the swing set secured in the ground, and as such, this is a permanent fixture, but the other bits can be moved and swapped around depending on the season.

Obviously there is some upkeep required to keep the garden and play area looking tidy, so we invested in some garden tools such as strimmers and leaf blowers to keep it looking at it’s best. S G S Engineering sell a huge range of tools and equipment to keep your garden in tip top condition.

Growing Vegetables

We are trying to improve Erin’s picky eating and encourage her to try more fruit and vegetables. So far, growing our own has proved really successful, with her being much more willing to at least taste something if she has seen exactly where it has come from. We are currently growing tomatoes and green beans, and the recent rainfall means they have shot up pretty rapidly! I love the educational element of this, but it also a great fun activity to do with the children, whatever the weather. Erin loves watering them and checking up on their progress.

The Environmental Playhouse

We recently built Erin’s new Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse, which is not only fab for Erin to role play with, but environmentally friendly too! Using water collected in her very own water butt, we can reuse the rainfall to look after the garden as opposed to taking water from our meter. The grass seed we have planted on the roof has also started to grow now and the finished look is fantastic!

What’s the favourite part of your garden?

*This is a collaborative post*