Earlier this summer, I converted a small portion of my flower bed into a rock garden for my two year old to play in.
We have this large patio out back and with a grill and picnic table at one end, and some play toys for the kids at the other. There's a little play house and a water table so I thought I'd add a rock garden to that side as well.
My two year old son loves to play with rocks. He likes to scoop them up and move them from one pile to another. I'm all for getting kids to play outside, so I decided to make him his very own rock garden.
I took a little section of the flower bed that surrounds our patio and laid down some paper so weeds wouldn't grow up through the rocks.
Not sure if that would prevent weeds, I also laid some black plastic (actually it was a garbage bag) on top of the paper. And I didn't like the 2x4 wood edges so I swapped them out for some large rocks we happened to have laying around outside.
Since I wanted my son to be able to scoop up the rocks, I thought I'd get some small rocks to fill up that area. I did buy some small rocks but they weren't small enough for scooping with his kid sized plastic shovels. That's when I decided to use aquarium gravel. Walmart had this bright purple color on clearance for $1 a bag, so that's what we got. I used 4 five pound bags for my space.
I surrounded the purple gravel with the small rocks and added a board so he could drive his cars.
It's cute and colorful and he does like to play in there. The only issue is that the gravel doesn't stay in the rock garden. Nothing that a broom can't fix though.
I also noticed that he mostly plays in the front of the rock garden since that's where he sits and his arms can't reach to the back of it where the retaining wall pavers are. So I moved all the purple gravel to the front and filled in the back with the small rocks. Now he has more gravel to dig through and as he gets older he has another section to play in.
I even painted the board to make it look like a road for his cars, although his favorite thing to do is to scoop the rocks into various cups and containers. I'm also thinking about getting some little plastic dinosaurs to add to the mix.
It's been a fun little area for him to play in.
This isn't the only kid friendly upgrade to our patio.
Check out the Flower Bed Tot Spot I created earlier this spring.
