As a father of 3 boys, with the first entering 1st grade soon, this is something that I have thought about. Below are a few thoughts. First off...I have heard that the "late and great" Michelle Derviss is authoring a book on the topic: "The Backyard Kidspaces Idea Book" from Taunton Press. We shall see if her volume contains ideas that are within the budget of us that are not members of the Marin County Millionaires Club. Lawn: This is probably the most useful item in my landscape. The kids love an open area to play soccer, hit a ball, play in the sprinkler, set up a tent, and such. My kids also love running around the house and at my new place they can ride the electric car all around the house as well. Playset: A few years ago I picked up a large wooden playset that Costco was selling. Is it worth the assembly time, the expense and the room that it takes up? I am not sure. They do play on it some what and it is a good place to congregate with friends, or at least push a toddler in the swing while the other boys play. Places to be boys: I need more areas where my boys can be boys. There is a balancing act between creating areas that kids want to play and areas that parents want their kids to play. Piles of dirt and pits of mud are great...if you are a little boy (I don't have much little girl experience), but maybe not so great for Parents. My oldest was upset when I cut down some overgrown forsythia bushes because he liked to play under them. Kids Garden: My 6 year old has gotten a reasonable amount of joy out of a butterfly garden that we (mostly I) planted. He enjoyed picking out some annuals, he enjoys seeing a butterfly in "his" garden, but he really loves finding worms! If he finds a worm elsewhere in the yard he will take it back to his garden. Changes and Personalities: Kids change quickly, so it would be hard for me to invest a bunch of time or money into something that will only provide one year's worth of interest. Also, I see quite a difference between what things my 6 and 4 year olds like to do (it is a bit early to tell with the youngest). One needs areas to run and play sports, while the other would be fine to sit and play with characters. Make sure you are creating items that YOUR kids would want to play with. - Brent

Remember... some of us want to see M. le bebe wearing some of the luxurious knitted finery that awaited his arrival... ummm... BOOTIES? how about booties and nothing else? (will prove indispensible for blackmail in the his teen years). :)

Green Elephant Want List last updated 2/16/12 Part sun/shade plants that bloom early or late to provide year round color & foliage (evergreen, variegated, purple) at the camp where we live. My personal favorite color is bright rose pink and least favorite is orange. We have woodland & sun gardens. Will take cuttings or potted plants. We're looking for reusable gardening materials for our Nature Center at Camp Berachah in Auburn, WA where we have a petting zoo, edible gardens, & activities for school age children attending our before/after school & summer camp programs. Our recent storm damaged our cyclone fencing, so we're using the opportunity to rebuild & expand our program. Accepting donations. Detailed want list and/or tax receipt available upon request. We want to show kids where food comes from & have a little fun in the garden with tall tepees & plants with unique colors, shapes, & names. Reusable garden materials: stakes, cages, bamboo poles, egg cartons, milk jugs, tools Perennial vegetables: Air potato, Dioscorea bulbifera Asparagus pea, Lotus tetragonobolus Chinese artichoke, Stachys affinia Good King Henry, Chenopodium bonus-henricus (AKA fat hen, Lincoln asparagus) Sea kale, Crambe maritime (fresh seeds germinate best) Cover Crops: Annual winter types: Austrain or Magnus Field Peas Pisum arvense, Crimson Clover Trifolium incarnatum, Fava or bell beans, Vicia faba Vetch: Lana, V. dasycarpa or Common, V. sativa Small grains: cereal rye, winter wheat, spelt, or barley Non-legumes: mustard Brassica juncea, rape B.napus, Arugula, or corn salad Valerianella locusta Herbs: any culinary perennial or annual Perilla, purple (Shisho or Beefsteak plant) Annuals: bloodleaf, chicken gizzard, or beefsteak plant (Iresine herbstii) Purple Lady Calendula, pink Mirabilis jalapa Limelight, 4oclock Morning glory: red/rose/pinks or Japanese Nasturtium except 'Alaska' Nicotania, pinks esp. sensation mix or dwarf Avalon mix Nicotiana x sanderae Perilla, Fantasy Plectranthus argentatus, silver spurflower Polka-dot plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya; also listed as H. sanguinolenta) Splash Select Mix Poppy: purple, pink or doubles Snapdragon, any named Sunflower that doesn�t need staking Viola Hardy Perennials: Agastache esp A. scrophularifolia (purple giant hyssop) Aquilegia (columbine) any named variety Alstroemeria Angelica gigas Chelone lyonii (pink turtlehead) Coreopsis, esp pinks Cyclamen hederifolium Daylilies: any, but esp. spiders, pinks/purples, reblooming Delosperma cooperi (hardy ice plant) Dianthus (cheddar or maiden pinks) Dictamnus (gas plant) Doroconum (leopard's bane) Echinacea, any Epimedium Eupatorium (Joe pye weed) esp. E. dubium Little Joe or E. fortunei Pink Frost (Japanese JPW) E.greggii (Perennial Texas Ageratum) Euphorbia, esp. shade tolerant types, but like all Gaillardia (blanket flower) esp. pinks like Punch Bowl & bicolors Heuchera, any Lobelia 'Queen Victoria' (cardinal flower with dark foliage/red flowers) Pachysandra Papaver orientale (oriental poppy) esp. bright colors � can be root cuttings Phlox divaricata (woodland phlox) Primula (primrose) any, esp. P. japonica or P. sieboldi Ratibida columnifera Prairie Coneflower, that�s not yellow Rudbeckia, any commerical named esp. bicolors Tiarella Tinantia erecta, widows tears Tricyrtis (toadlily) Shrubs (esp. dwarf foundation types): Aucuba japonica (Japanese Aucuba) Berberis (barberry) esp. dwarf red, orange, or evergreen types Hamamelis (witch hazel) esp. Jolena, Ruby Glow, Fire Charm Lespedeza thunbergii, (Thunberg bush clover) Leucothoe fontanesia (Drooping Leucothoe) Lindera benzoin (spice bush) Nandina (heavenly bamboo) esp. dwarf or smaller types Osmanthus heterophyllus (aquifolium) Goshiki� Ornamental Grasses: Carex, Chasmanthium latifolium (northern sea oats) esp. variegated one, Miscanthus, & others Vines: any part sun/shade noninvasive perennial or annual sun plants with bright colors: Iresine herbstii Aureoreticulata, Formosa, Blazin Rose

Kathy, Well, gardening with kids is more fun than gardening without them! First, from the perspective of once being a gardening kid myself.....I remember working in the yard and veggie garden with my dad when I was a kid and I always loved every minute of it. I had grandparents and aunts and uncles who gardened, some of them on quite a large scale, so gardening was just something that was a part of our life. When I was a kid, it was just part of our routine to sit on the porch and shell peas or snap beans or whatever. And, you know, every conversation with a gardening relative in the harvest season included a line like "I put up 12 quarts of tomatoes today".....or whatever. It never occurred to me, growing up, that everyone didn't have veggie gardens, fruit trees, berry bramble or bushes, etc., in their own backyards. Imagine how shocked I was to learn that some people had to buy their jams and jellies!! I also remember that I always thought home-grown flowers were the prettiest! (I still do.) I'll forever be grateful to my dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles and also neighborhood friends who gardened and were always willing to answer my questions and share the gardening passion with me. How well I remember all those "little old lady" gardeners in my neighborhood who worked outside in their cotton dresses, practical shoes, wide-brimmed hats and gardening gloves.....and now, except that I generally work in blue jeans and t-shirts, I guess I am one of those ladies. (They weren't really "little old ladies", although as a child, that's how I thought of them.) Most all of my gardening relatives and the neighbors I grew up with are gone now, although my youngest uncle is still alive and well and gardening in East Texas, but I will always have my precious memories of them and their gardens! My son, who is in his 20s now, probably cannot remember a time when we didn't garden. We always had veggies and fruit trees, and built our first water garden when he was only about 8 or 10 years old. I remember how fascinated he was when our order of pond plants and bullfrog tadpoles (from Lily Pons in Houston) arrived and we "planted" that first water garden. Later, he, our nephew and my DH hand-dug a second lily pond in that yard, and then we had a third in a large, round galvanized stock tank, Between the ponds and the swimming pool, our whole backyard in Fort Worth was pretty much water, with veggies in one relatively small area, and fruit trees in another. When we moved to the country, our then-teenaged son was a tremendous help in building the raised beds and planting all kinds of stuff. He still pays close attention to what I grow even though he is busy and not around the house much. Some of his favorite things in his younger years included growing all kinds of things on teepees.....gourds, mini-pumpkins, pole beans, morning glories, moon flowers, etc. Of course, the teepees had to be large enough that he and his friends could play inside of them!! He also loved the process of raising pickling cucumbers and turning them into pickles. Making strawberry jam was a favorite activity when he was younger, as was picking all kinds of produce, but especially peaches and blackberries. Nowadays, his time is pretty occupied with firefighting and paramedic school and the young woman who will one day be his wife, but he still is very helpful....especially if I need for someone to come kill a venomous snake in the garden, or chase a bobcat out of the garden! Of course, he willingly eats food from the garden, and cooks with it as well. He's always been interested in the older heirloom varieties that come in "odd" colors....like black tomatoes or purple potatoes. In fact, his fiancee' recently made mashed potatoes from some All-Blue Potatoes I'd grown this spring, and they both thought having lilac-colored mashed potatoes was pretty special. (EVERYONE, adult or child, always seems to love veggies that are unusual colors....like orange eggplants or red-fleshed potatoes or white pumpkins, or whatever.) Since my "little boy" is now a professional firefighter, he's turned into quite an accomplished cook and, during his first year in the fire station, he was constantly coming home and trying out new recipes on us....and this often involved veggies and herbs right from the garden. I think cooking at work broadened his appreciation of having the ingredients growing right out in the yard! Over the years, we've shared our garden with the children, and now--the grandchildren--of our friends. It is always fun to see the delight on a young child's face when he finds a ripe watermelon, or picks a cherry tomato off the vine and eats it right there. Often, the bugs and butterflies in the garden are just as fascinating to these kids, since a lot of them grow up in very nice neighborhoods where everything is very neat and precise and lots of pesticides are used and, as a consequence, you don't see a lot of dragonflies or bees or lizards or butterflies or toads or whatever. Our garden, growing in reckless abandon and full of all kinds of creatures is a wonderland for a lot of "city kids" who've never been around a garden. Although our son didn't seem all that interested in the veggie garden during his later high school years (what with school activities, a job, a car, and girls.....), it suddenly became a VERY popular place with him and his friends during whatever year it was that they had to make a insect collection for biology. A lot of his friends in town came out to our place because they "couldn't find" enough insects in town. LOL At our house, they could find the 30 or 40 or 50 insects they needed in a couple of hours! I've noticed, too, that all his girlfriends have had an interest in the garden....even after they aren't his girlfriend any more. LOL They particularly seem to love all the flowers, but especially the variety of sunflowers in all sizes and colors. I look forward to some day sharing the garden and all of its' wonders with another generation when I become a grandparent. One thing that I think was a surprise to all of us, and not just our son, was what a great icebreaker the veggies and flowers turned out to be. Moving into a very rural location where you can't even see the nearest houses (well, 10 years later you can see 1 house, but only because they cleared a lot of land and removed all the trees), the flowers and trees gave everyone driving by an excuse to stop and visit. We "met" most of our new neighbors when they stopped to admire a flower or the veggie garden. (Because our best soil is in front of the house, between the house, which sits back about 300' from the road, and the road itself, that's where the veggie garden is, and it is a great "icebreaker".) To this day, strangers driving by often stop to "visit" when I am out in the garden, and it doesn't matter if they are six years old, or 36, or 60 or 90 years old. So, I hope DS has seen how gardens bring people together too. It is hard to pick out one particular memory that is more special or memorable than the others, but I do think one of my "proudest" gardening moments was when DH's best friend and long-time police partner passed away after a brief battle with a brain tumor. We went out to the yard later that day and cut flowers and put together separate bouquets for his mom, his sister, his wife, his son/daughter-in-law, and his other son & grandson. Each flower arrangement had flowers that were specifically memorable or important to the person for whom they were intended, and THAT was so important to us. The lesson I hope DS got from that was that gardening is one way we can express emotions when, sometimes, events happen for which words are not enough. I hope DS's memories of gardening with me are as important to him as my memories are to me! If I had to sum up all those times we spent together in the yard and garden, I'd simply repeat that old saying "Ain't we got fun!" Dawn