This week we explored gardening and made our own Zen Gardens! If the girls want to earn the Gardening Badge, they will just need to take care of their own garden of plants and/or vegetables for a season. As the girls arrived, they started decorating their Zen Garden containers. We had our usual opening ceremony, and talked about the plan for the evening. We started out with an explanation about Zen Gardens and how some people find making patterns in them to be relaxing. Once they had finished their decorating, we helped the girls to fill their container half-way with salt and added a toothpick as the 'rake'. The girls then chose pebbles to add to their gardens. These gardens were very popular and the girls were excited to take them home and show them to their families.
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Our second activity was to Design A Garden. Each girl had a sheet of paper and had to decide what she wanted to grow, and where to plant each item. Some girls got very creative, adding topiaries, ponds, paths and other decorative features.
One of our Guiders is an active gardener, so she talked to the girls about Sites, Soils and Plant Protection. We learned about choosing where to place our plants based on how much sun or shade they need and the different soil types in our area. We had brought in soil samples from our garden and the girls were able to touch and feel clay soil, loamy soil that has been enriched over several years, peat with seaweed from the garden centre, compost from our backyard composter, and horse manure! The girls found out how to protect their plants, the importance of watering early in the morning or in the evening so the water has a chance to be absorbed into the soil rather than evaporating, and the need to cover plants when nights are cool in case of frost and providing shade on very hot days.
We broke for an active game at this point - Squirt - before moving on to our final activity.
The last activity of the evening was to make Reflective Garden Ornaments from old CDs. We provided glue, sequins and gems and let the girls be as creative as they wished! Wire was added so that the CDs can be hung up in a garden or window.
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