Houseplants for Kids

We like our houseplants for all our adult reasons: they’re a snippet of green in our busy lives, they look amazing and really spruce up a room, and they even help to keep our home a little healthier and cleaner while staying up to date on a few of the coolest decor trends. While these are all great reasons to adore having a plant or two inside with you year-round, we forget the magic that an indoor plant can bring to our kids.

Forever Summer Indoors – Houseplants for Kids

The whole idea of bringing a plant – often an interesting tropical or warm-weather species we don’t see a lot of locally – indoors to be lush and green all year is simply saturated with childhood magic. These plants themselves are super cool and full of great textures and smells to explore and stimulate the imagination.

Houseplants are a great match for kids for their development-boosting capabilities: teaching about nature and life, exploring the senses and imagination, and even teaching responsibility to those that take charge of some plant care. None of their benefits should overshadow how downright exciting plants at home can be, though!

Houseplants are a playground for exploration and imagination right in your home, but there are so many fun ways to really get you involved in creating a little world for your kids to embrace having a plant at home. These special gardens are great for the kids, but are so fun to create that the adults can’t help but want to be involved, too. Here are some of our favorite at-home houseplant gardens to try:

Fairy Gardens

The “Fairy Garden” look was the Pinterest-popular original themed garden and we can see why. There’s something magical about the idea of a tiny fairy making their home right there in your living room next to your houseplant.

This garden is complete with whatever fairy decor you and your kids want – explore little mushrooms, cute cobblestones, tiny cottage homes, or even a little fairy pond! Use as much space in and around your houseplant’s container as you want to make the look fit perfectly into your home.

Hobbit Gardens

This is the perfect fit for any fantasy fiends who may have been swept away in the world of Tolkien or old mythical stories. Hobbits themselves are the perfect fit for a miniature home in your houseplants. Your towering fern, trailing ivy, or even a bonsai tree are the perfect fit for a little hobbit hole to make an appearance underneath. Of course, no hobbit garden is complete without a hobbit hole under a hill, but you can use your plant as inspiration for other details to tie in to make your cozy hobbit home perfect.

Dino Gardens

Kids have always loved dinosaurs, and the fascination is not set to get old anytime soon! Decorating any houseplant with a dinosaur theme is a fun craft for the dino-obsessed kid, but we especially love pairing some of our favorite prehistoric plants with this type of garden. Ferns have been around since before many of our favorite dinosaurs walked the earth. Pairing a living fossil with a dinosaur scene is the perfect way to have some fun making a garden and even make a small science lesson out of what used to only be pretty decor.

Making Your Gardens

Imagination is the rule of thumb here, but we have a few tips to make it easier to get started:

• Go as big or little as you want. Looking online can be a fun source of inspiration, but it can also be discouraging to see some perfectly polished creations when you wanted to have fun, but maybe not go all-out. A couple tiny decorations are all you need to make a miniature garden out of your houseplant – and having fun creating something with your kids is the real prize.
• Stores are a great place to get decorations (for a price). For the DIY crow, making your own decorations is a fun way to totally personalize your plant on whatever budget you want. If you aren’t sure about your crafting abilities or want a couple specific touches, these gardens are popular enough that you can rely on finding decorations at many garden centers – just keep in mind that they be a bit pricier than homemade.

• Balance planning and exploration. We’ve found that our best mini gardens have come from planning enough to know what we want, but being flexible enough to embrace new inspiration as it comes. Crafting with kids is all about flexibility, but a bit of structure can help keep everything on track.
• Some plants are more kid-friendly than others. Keep in mind that some houseplants might be poisonous, which would not be a good match for a home with young children. Crafts are only fun if they are safe, too, so make sure to do some research or ask to check if plants are safe around kids before bringing them home.
• Your garden is an addition to your plant – so no maintenance required! Most gardens are just fun decoration, so you can confidently keep caring for your plant as normal even with a garden there. Involving your kids could even be a great way for them to learn more about plants while they have fun creating a garden world!

Kids are a nearly unending source of wonder, imagination, creativity, and energy that is too good an opportunity to give up. Miniature gardens are adorable, fun to create, and make the most out of your houseplants so that both you and your kids have something to nurture, create, and enjoy right in the comfort of your home – all year.