Kids Activities – DIY Succulent Crystal Garden

Since we moved back to Australia, we have taken a keen interest in gardening and growing our own vegetables, herbs and flowers each Spring. It is just so nice to have our own small piece of green space and to teach the kids a little more where food comes from in the hope they may eventually eat vegetables… ( still waiting for that!)

This has also translated to indoors as well and this year the boys and I have finally worked out how to take care of some succulents which we bought at our local fabulous sustainable nursery, New Leaf.  We have gone from killing our succulents to watching them thrive! The boys (and I !)  now know that their plants need watering once a week or longer and not every day… It has been a learning curve for us all.

We have also been discovering crystals and learning about gems this year after being introduced to them by a close friend. We found out a few months back that one of our fave shops in the area, Little Paper Lane now stocks crystals and gems, so we went to check out what they had and the boys came away with a clear point crystal quartz and circular rose quartz. The boys have been cleansing them at full moon and loving learning about their healing effects.

Lastly on a road trip up north in July, we visited the incredible Crystal Castle & Shambhala Gardens, which is close to Byron Bay. This place is sheer magic; the whole area is imbued with beauty, peace and the crystals make you feel so energised and renewed( this is coming from a former skeptic!) The boys absolutely loved it there and we added to our crystal collection with an agate, amethyst and labradorite. In chatting with the staff up there, we bought some large rough hewn amethyst and rose quartz as well they were on sale (hehe love a bargain!) and we thought we might use them one day in our garden.

With all those factors coming together, fast forward a few months and I thought perhaps as our mini succulents were outgrowing some of their pots that we could create a little crystal succulent garden for inside. I picked up a $5 ceramic salad bowl from Kmart, some pebbles for drainage and decoration and 2 more succulents to add to the garden together with our succulent potting mix we were set.

What you need to create your own DIY Succulent Crystal Garden:

  1. Large container – we used a $5 ceramic salad bowl  but you can literally use anything that has a bit of depth to it. We drilled a hole for drainage but with the pebbles and soil it probably isn’t necessary but as I am not 100% confident in my succulent gardening skills I didn’t want to risk not having one.
  2. Succulent potting mix ( google it as you can make your own!)
  3. Crystals
  4. Succulents
  5. large pebbles for drainage
  6. smaller decorative pebbles for the top
  7. gardening gloves and trowel

Step 1: add large pebbles for drainageStep 2: add succulent potting mix over the top 3. Place the succulents and crystals in their final position to test out how it will look 4. Pop the succulents into the soil and finish off with the crystals5. Add the decorative pebbles around the garden to fill in around the plants and crystals

This is what our original garden looked like after planting our 5 mini succulents and 2 crystals. But we decided it wasn’t quite enough, so we quickly ducked down to Little Paper Lane for a quick visit before school pick up and bought 2 rough clear quartz and a blue apophyllite. We thought an extra 3 crystals would complete our little garden quite nicely.

6. Our completed DIY Succulent Crystal Garden!

I have to say we had it sitting on the dining room table last night at dinner and it really did bring a sense of peace to the dinner and just looking and having it on the table!

I would love to know what you think? Is this something you would like to do with your kids? Do your kids also love gardening?

Chat more soon!

Lizzie x

Disclosure: this is not a sponsored post nor are there are any affiliate links. We just love our local small businesses!