The Here We Grow! Children’s Garden offers a world of interactive opportunities for children of all ages to discover, learn, and use their senses while having fun in a series of garden spaces.
The Vegetable Garden showcases a diverse range of seasonally changing themed raised bed plantings. As part of the experiential, hands-on learning in this garden, volunteers and staff lead periodic vegetable planting, harvesting, and tasting activities. Visitors of all ages can learn, first hand, how the food that makes its way to their table begins as a tiny seedling in the garden.
Nearby, the Sensory Garden offers visitors a chance to engage their senses through interactive touch and smell opportunities while observing a wide variety of plants growing in raised beds.
The Butterfly and Bird Garden encourages visitors to learn about and promote the importance of food and habitat for wildlife. This garden contains plants that are host and food plants for butterflies and birds, as well as, beautiful garden plants for the backyard.
While wandering through the Children’s Garden, visitors may discover the Fireman’s Hand Pump which encourages a hands-on interactive opportunity to water the Vegetable Garden. Once the handles are pumped, see what happens!
The Demonstration Bee Hive allows a unique peek into the secret life of bees and an opportunity to observe them hard at work. With close observation, visitors might even be able to find the queen bee in the hive.
The Demonstration Bee Hive serves as a reminder of the important role of bees in the garden. Many people think of honey or beeswax as key products of bees. However, the seemingly simple process of bees pollinating flowers is one of the most crucial functions of bees, ensuring the production of many of our most important fruits and vegetables.
From April through October, bees come and go from the Demonstration Bee Hive through plastic tubes in the screen structure adjacent to the hive. Each day the bees go in search of nectar and pollen throughout Shangri La. In order to keep our bee population healthy, though, in November the bees go to their winter vacation home at Shangri La’s Nature Center for a much needed rest.
With so many hands-on opportunities, the Here We Grow! Children’s Garden is a great place to engage the family.