These Edible Spring Gardens are super easy for children to create & a tasty way to celebrate the natural world. Always popular with all ages, they make a great Spring activity to explore & discover a little more about the earth beneath our feet.
To make our Spring gardens we used recycled dessert pots. Yoghurt pots would work just as well, but these transparent pots allow you to see each layer of the garden as it grows!
We also used:
1 tablespoon raisins/sultanas
1 packet of Chocolate pudding dessert (& milk)
1 chocolate brownie/cupcake crumbled into a breadcrumb consistency
1 tablespoon Coco Pops (or any other breakfast cereal)
A handful of desiccated coconut
A few drops of green food colouring
Mini chocolate beans to decorate
We started by making the grass for our garden, & added a handful of coconut & a few drops of green food colouring to a plastic food bag, then rubbed together until the colour was even.
Then it was time to create our garden! We started by adding a layer of raisins/sultanas to the bottom of our pot followed by the Coco Pops. After mixing our chocolate mousse we added a layer to the pot & then sprinkled over the crumbled cake. These ingredients can be added in any order your kids wish, & of course they can decide how much of each ingredient they wish to add, it really doesn't matter too much about the quantity of each, our ingredients are simply a suggestion. If your kids aren't keen on any of the above ingredients they can be substituted for many others, such as ice-cream, Oreos, or ginger/digestive biscuits.
When we'd finished adding the ingredients our garden dessert looked like this. Looking at the different layers gave us an opportunity to briefly talk about various soil layers beneath the ground, & which animals & insects lived there. We talked about the rocks (raisins) at the bottom of our pot & how we'd have to dig through the other layers to reach them.
With older children you might like to explore the different soil layers & what each ingredient represents.
Crumbled chocolate cake - Humus
Chocolate mousse - Topsoil
Coco Pops - Subsoil
Raisins/Sultanas - Bedrock
We finished our garden by adding our green grass (desiccated coconut) & we were ready to add some garden accessories!
The mini chocolate beans created simple flower shapes & were great for exploring patterns. We couldn't resist adding a little ladybird (made from red fondant icing & decorated with an icing pen) to enjoy our colourful garden.
You could of course create any insect or flower from coloured fondant icing, or add the mini wafer flowers for a quick finish.
Having talked about which animals/minibeasts lived in the soil we decided to add a worm to the garden! A jellysweet snake made a perfect worm, & a teaspoon gave us the ideal 'garden spade' so we could dig in!
This is such a fun desert to make with kids & a fabulous way to explore different soil properties, or just celebrate how amazing our green spaces area. What would you add to the top of your Edible Spring Garden?