Parent-made DIY projects for kids are endlessly satisfying; there's the fun of planning, sourcing materials or working with what you have, and lovingly making something that you hope your children will enjoy for a long time. But what happens when interest wanes? Give it an afterlife. This planter box used to be a sandbox.
We marveled when Dana of Made built this sandbox for her kids last year. The sandbox had a great run, but the kids were losing interest just as Dana's daughter Lucy developed an interest in gardening. When Dana decided to give square foot gardening a shot, she surveyed their yard and realized that the stage had already been set. Dana's husband, Casey, poured soil directly over the sand and marked off the grid with string. Lucy made markers and started a gardening journal, the family got to work planting and watering, and it wasn't long before things started growing.
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(Images: Made)
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How sweet...and ingenious.
Presumably, they had an anti-cat cover (any box of sand or fresh soil in my garden would quickly become a litter box for all the #%@& roaming cars around here) when that was in sandbox mode. What do you do about that when it's a planter? I guess you could make a sort of teepee thing out of chicken wire or something.
I'd be tempted to float a couple pavers in there to put your hand or foot on when reaching into the center.
*cats. That would be something if it really was cars.
Very cute and clever.
They poured soil right over the sand? Sounds like a terrible planting bed to me. Sand is not growing medium, and it will lose water very quickly.
we bought a sandbox like this last year at Lowes and it actually says sandbox/raised planter on the box. It has a cover built in, and was pretty inexpensive.