Experienced gardeners and beginners alike love theme gardens.  For the experienced gardener they are a chance to experiment with harder to grow or exotic plants.  A theme garden is a great way to add a spot of pizazz to a mature landscape.  If you’ve grown tired of gardening because you always seem to be planting the same things a theme garden is the perfect solution to rekindle your love of gardening.

Theme gardens lend themselves to smaller places or even containers, allowing the novice gardener a way to ease into the hobby without feeling intimidated.  Because theme gardens are narrowly focused, it makes plant selection much easier.  Small theme gardens are wonderful projects for assisted living community groups and churches where people of many different abilities and lifestyles can come together over the tending of a garden.

Kids Theme Gardens

Take advantage of your kid’s natural affinity for playing in the dirt by introducing them to the joys of gardening.  Kids really enjoy theme gardens, especially if you let them help come up with the theme and plant selection.  Theme gardening can take the child back in time to experience the foods, flowers and lifestyles of specific historical eras.  Gardening is a good way for a home schooling family to have fun and get in a summer living history lesson. 

Alphabet

It isn’t difficult to find colorful and easy to grow plants for each of the letters of the alphabet, starting with alyssum and ending with zinnias.  Before you get the kids started searching for the plants on the Internet, be sure you have a large enough place to grow 26 plants.

Animals

Kids have fun being silly and what could be sillier than plants named as animals?  Encourage their creativeness with dandelion, tiger lily, monkey grass, cowslips, elephant ears, foxglove, catmint and the succulent hen and chicks.

Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes

Children’s literature is a rich source for the detective minded child.  Challenge them to find the clues to various plants in their favorite stories and nursery rhymes.  Here a few titles and the associated plants to get your child thinking:

Jack in the Bean Stalk:  beans (especially the giant varieties) are fun for kids to grow and they grow really fast

Cinderella:  pumpkins and gourds, especially the giant varieties

Lavender Blue: herbs lavender and dill

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary: silver bells (Canterbury bells)

Peter Piper: peppers

Peter, the pumpkin eater: pumpkins

Specific characters can be found in the garden too.  Thumbelina, the Thumbelina variety zinnia and  Tom Thumb, whose name has been given to both a miniature tomato and a popcorn variety.   

Rainbows

Plant this one in an arch shape of 7 rows.  Each row is devoted to a specific color of the rainbow.  In order, the rainbow colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Colonial kitchen

A garden of herbs and vegetables common in our country’s first years is an opportunity to learn about food and history while having fun. A little research will provide you will lots to choose from like carrots, onion, garlic, corn, and beans.  Flavorings of the era include the herbs sage, rosemary, parsley, and mint.  The kitchen garden of the Colonial era was also the main source of the family’s dye for coloring their wool and their medicines, so don’t overlook the herbs of yarrow, calendula, nettle and flax.