Gift ideas for children

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Last updated April 2018

Instant fun and games essential
Things for children to grow – gift ideas
Gardening equipment for kids – gift ideas
Pint-sized furniture – gift ideas
Animal-related gift ideas
Scarecrows for children
Kites and windsocks for children’s gifts

Instant fun and games essential

For presents for young children, you need to give them something that they can get their hands on NOW and see the results very soon afterwards. Older ones should have a little more patience…

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Things to grow – gift ideas

If you give seeds, make sure they’re quick growing and can be started off immediately they are unwrapped. Growing kits contain all that is needed – just add water. Plant plugs (young plants in their own plug of compost) are also readily available for a range of flowers and edibles, and are ideal for children as they are easy to handle and pot up to grow on a windowsill or outside. Spring and summer are easier seasons for giving seeds and plugs as there is a whole growing season ahead. Herb collections and kits are good for windowsill growing, and fast-growing plants such as sunflowers, runner beans or mange-tout are sure-fire winners for outside. Just don’t forget a tape measure for those sunflowers, with a note book to record progress.

Bulbs are a wonderful instant package if given at the right time of year too – in winter choose (or compile) a kit with compost, containers and specially prepared bulbs such as huge Amaryllis flowers or shorter hyacinth (see Thompson and Morgan’s guide to forcing hyacinths for winter flowering indoors). Compact Crocus, miniature Iris, or daffodils (dwarf or larger) (Narcissus) are alternatives for outside or indoors.

Mushroom growing kits from suppliers such as Gardening Express are suitable for most of the year, if you have somewhere with the right growing conditions (not too hot, not too cold, out of the sun).

Alternatively, give them a fruiting plant that they can nurture and eventually harvest, picking and eating the crop there and then. Choose fruit plants that don’t have thorns, that produce a crop soon after planting, and produce sweet fruit that doesn’t need cooking – currants and berries are a good bet.

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Gardening equipment – gift ideas

Getting dirty is part of the fun, but there are children’s sized gardening gloves from B & Q and so they can copy Mum and Dad. And wellies are no longer only black or green – there are plenty of bright colours and patterns for youngsters.

For tools suitable for small hands, look out for the mini-tools (eg from Selections) sold for adults to tend window boxes and planters. Alternatively there are children-specific tools – not plastic toys but either smaller or lighter than adult versions (e.g. from hand fork, trowel, garden fork, garden spade, Tooled Up).

For children fascinated by creepie crawlies – get them a wormery and the composting habit in one.

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Pint-sized furniture – gift ideas

For fun, there are playhouses (Wendy houses, tree houses, wooden wigwams, dens, playtents and shelters), which come in all shapes, sizes and prices to suit different gardens, children and wallets.

And for meals al fresco, there’s mini garden furniture for small people to use – benches and seats made in plastic or wood available from various companies including B & Q

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Animal-related gift ideas

Delight a child with a hedgehog-shaped boot brush and scraper – which they may allow you to use too, if you say please.

Or encourage the real thing with a hedgehog house for the bottom of the garden.

Bird feeders, bird baths, and homes for hibernators (such as insect houses/hotels and toad homes) are all ideas for fuelling fascination in your garden’s wildlife.

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Scarecrows for children’s gifts

Give them the materials to make their very own personalised garden sculpture. There’s nothing like a project!

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Kites and windsocks for children’s gifts

Fly a scarecrow, sunflower, carrot, peapod or ladybird, to name just a few of the novelty windsocks fromĀ Skyblue, or choose a kite from the same online shop, or give them the materials to make their own.

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