Yesterday, John and I toured the Buffalo Botanical Gardens- a REAL gem, with an around-the-world tour of exotic plants and the not-so-exotic. A recent addition is the Children's Garden, created just out their back door. Small and designed to let kids BE kids, it includes a large shallow water feature where kids (and birds) can play, a Touch Me garden of herbs, a raised bed where kids can plant and dig up plants, compost bins, a butterfly garden and, my favorite, two pumps that actully work, mounted onto half barrels. I could just imagine our PreK and K kids spending all their recess pumping water and letting it run through their fingers.
One problem was that it was almost all in sun, so I could see that kids wouldn't want to spend too much time outside in the very hot weather, but it had lots of feeders and we saw goldfinches, chickadees and a cardinal coming back and forth- all birds kids would easily spot!
An interesting piece of information about Buffalo- It hosts the country's "largest flower show" each year. Where, you might ask? EVERYWHERE. It's actually a tour of house gardens- scads of them all over the Buffalo area and the whole thing is FREE! There was a wonderful photography exhibit of some of the gardens- just amazing.
As soon as we get home, I'll post the photos of the Children's Garden, now that Fern has shown me how.
Penny
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