Fun Front Yard Things🦋🌼🌱

Being outside with my kids has become a favorite part of motherhood for me. We garden, we read, we picnic as often as possible for any snack or meal. Being outside is good for kids and for adults, and it just feels good! Below are some of my favorite ways we’ve added interest to our suburban front yard:

First, bird houses: metal, wood, hand painted, hung from shepherd’s hooks, trees, and fence posts. A bluebird family has nested in this blue one below over the last 2 or 3 years and it’s very exciting to observe.

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Our flower garden brings me immense joy, and my neighbors love to stop to ask about what’s growing. We spend a lot of time out front, and it’s helped us get to know our neighborhood a lot over the last 4-5 years.

If you’re in north Texas, zinnias and sunflowers are two easy flowers to start right now. Watching pollinators work never gets old, and kids LOVE to help plant, weed, and cut bouquets!

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A veggie garden can be a little steeper learning curving than flowers, but nothing beats eating fresh cherry tomatoes or berries off the vine. Even pulling onions has become a big fun event for us each year. The girls were thrilled to yank them out last month. They are 1 and 4 years old 😄

I almost don’t want to admit how shy I felt about putting our “Little Free Library” in our yard. Of course I’m so glad I did it. We get lots of excited visitors, and we enjoy adding touches like fairy doors on the post, and the upgraded latch (which kids are sooo drawn to from ages 1 to 10, they love this little latch!)

We also love our “nature trail.” It is just some stepping stones on a mulch path, in the corner of our garden that’s a little less manicured than the rest. Again, kids of all ages AND adults are so pulled to stand on stepping stones ☺️ I am hoping to make some new stones to add to our yard sometime this year. Please let me know if you have any tips on this! And if you’re looking for lots of mulch, check out chipdrop. You can see our mulch pile below. It’s whole truck load from a tree trimming company, but it’s totally free with free delivery. And while the pile remains, kids love it too 🤪

Our fairy garden began as a pile of flowers and rocks, laid out carefully in front of this tiny wooden birdhouse last year. A sweet neighbor gifted the girls a big bag of seashells at a garage sale, that they added to their “fairy garden” and from there, things escalated quickly. I don’t manage this activity much at all. It’s covered in leaves and mulch and the kids dig it up and rediscover it all the time!

Any spot in your yard or flower bed can become a “fairy garden” with a few natural elements like sticks, dandelions, pine cones, pebbles, etc.

This last one isn’t a physical “thing” but it’s a huge element of our front yard, and it’s prioritizing and respecting PLAY!

Kids experiment, observe, learn, and process life experiences via play so I go to great lengths not to interrupt their play. As long as they don’t harm wildlife, there are little to no rules for play in our yard, and I leave the evidence of their play as often as possible. This “barn and tack room” has existed on our front porch for nearly 2 weeks now and both girls are so proud of it. They build on it and arrange it and play in it EVERY day. The funky little strip of soil between our porch and sidewalk is also the kids’ flower bed to plant and dig up as they please. It’s currently filled with sunflowers the kids planted with birdseed, pumpkins that Soph planted by smashing hers with her bike tires last Fall… and tons of beans that they dumped from their sensory bin 😆 What are your favorite elements of your yard? Any we need to add? I would love to hear! ❤️