Garden for the Soul
Help The Easter Bunny Out Over Easter
If you have a garden to enjoy at the moment, you probably appreciate it more than ever. Our gardens are often our havens and that sanctuary is valued at the best of times but right now, they really are precious to us. We’re loving that Spring is happening all around us regardless of the current challenges. She’s very thankfully delivering her beauty anyway. Blossoms are reliably showing off their beauty against the blue Spring skies and tulips and daffodils are like children vying for your attention wanting to be noticed. Talking of children, if you have youngsters (or big kids) in your family, and a garden that they can escape into.
Here is a popular suggestion on what you can do to keep them busy this Easter.
Easter Egg Hunt/Mystery
The Easter Bunny may struggle a little this year, so why not give them a helping hand and create a little hunt for the children? Many shops such as supermarkets sell Easter Egg Hunts where you’ll have plastic eggs that you can fill with little eggs or small sweets and hide them around the garden.
If you’re not able to get these during your essential food trips, fear not – improvisation is our speciality – but don’t forget to buy the sweet treats for them while you’re out.
Waterproofing is your biggest challenge as well as making them bright and noticeable. If you have sealable freezer or food bags they will be perfect but if not, cling film will do the job too.
1. Take a piece of paper and write the numbers on them for how many bundles of eggs you’ll hide. This way, The Egg Detectives will know how many clues to look for. Cut the numbers out and set them aside. If you’re feeling particularly creative, draw them as colourful Easter Eggs with a clearly visible number in the middle.
2. If you have a ‘prize’ at the end ie a larger Easter Egg, write out one clue that gives them an idea of where it is.
3. Find different coloured paper or plastic – any clean material that can be used to put the sweets inside to make them noticeable once out in the garden and cut into smaller pieces for each bundle.
4. Pop some sweets into a piece of coloured paper (if they need wrapping in cling film etc first just to be on the safe side, do this first) and wrap them up to make a colourful little package.
5. Take a plastic bag or some cling film, place a number inside it, ensuring the number is visible from the outside, and then pop one of the coloured sweetie packages into it. Wrap up tightly to ensure no water can get inside. We sometimes tie them with coloured ribbon as it means you can hang them as well as place them on or in things.
6. Repeat for all of the other packages until the whole hunt is in front of you fully wrapped – including the final clue as to the last one.
7. Easter Morning – go and stealthily hide them around your garden, matching the difficulty of the hiding places with the age of The Egg Detectives.
8. Give the children an Easter basket or container to put them into as they collect and enjoy!
A couple of additional tweaks that may be useful for you…
If you have multiple children doing the hunts – allocate each child a colour when you design the challenge so they know to only look for their own colours. Then have a little chat first about what they’ll do if they find colours that aren’t theirs – will they all do it as one big hunt and share the locations openly, or will they keep them a secret and tiptoe away quietly for the others to find them…
If you have older children or it’s for adults – you could create a trail of clues to have them ‘solve their way through the mystery’ instead of using numbers. Top tip – write the clues out on a piece of paper so you can keep up with which clues lead to which locations. We’ve often got our clues muddled up and had to hide them all over again!
We hope you have a lovely Easter and as always, if you need any help or advice with your garden, we’re here to help. Our design team is still able to help you plan ahead so why not get in touch by booking your consultation with Claire Withers now.
