A spring tutorial! H’s been more and more interested in flowers this year as they bloom all over. She’s been picking dandelions everywhere we go, and digging holes in the mulch in the backyard with the gardening tools her grandparents gave her. I do not have a green thumb, but she’s fascinated. So I’ve been brainstorming some gardening projects we could do together, for me to learn some things and for her to watch things grow.

I have supplies to make some fairy gardens, but first I thought we should plant something just for her to take care of. She’s outgrowing her Lego Duplo, and that seemed like a great place to start. So we re-purposed some bricks to make a small planter for her to look after this spring and summer.

This project is so incredibly easy. You’ll need:

• Duplo baseplates
• Duplo blocks
• A plastic bag
• Small flowers in soil (we used 3 superbells)
• Potting soil (depends, you may not need extra soil if your flowers fit snugly in the planter)

First gather up whatever baseplates you have that are a good size. We didn’t make a big planter, it’s a size that H can carry.

Then let your kids stack bricks along the outer edge of the baseplates.

Built it up to a height that’s tall enough for the flowers you’ve purchased.

Just a little higher.

Once it’s a good height for flowers, let your kids do a little decorating while you get the flowers ready. Take a plastic shopping bag (one with holes is great), and cut the bottom off of it.

If your plastic bag doesn’t already have holes, poke a couple in the bottom. Then put the bag in the bottom of your planter, to act as a liner.

We found that this is all the drainage we needed. The Duplo have gaps that made some natural drainage, but not so much that the water just leaked straight out. And the plastic bag helped direct the drainage to the bottom of the planter, rather than out of any side gaps. Also, the bag makes it easier to pull the flowers out of the planter if you want to change them.

Then you just start adding your flowers, with their soil, right inside the bag and the planter.

We could fit 3 superbells in 3 colors into our planter. After all the flowers were in, we blew off the excess dirt on the bricks and used a small brush to sweep away the hard-to-reach things.

And then we had a cute little planter that she’d made herself, with flowers she picked, that she can water herself all summer. You can make one, too, with your littles!