Jun 27

Jun 27 DIY: Mini Garden

Grow baby succulents in an adorable mini garden

It’s summer, and we’ve been gardening! Right now in Central Florida, our days have been wet and rainy, so we’ve moved our garden inside to a sunny windowsill. Our garden is extra special because it’s mini. It’s a garden of baby succulents.

You can grow baby succulents by placing dropped succulent leaves on a shallow layer of soil or by carefully removing a bottom leaf from a succulent plant and placing it on the soil.

Baby succulents are especially wonderful to grow with children who love all things tiny, like my own daughter Eliza. They’re so cute and special, and we wanted to take extra care of them by making a Gina Ktana (mini garden). In Hebrew, the word garden is Gina and mini / small is Ktana.

Even though these gardens are small, they still need attention. Mostly, a sunny windowsill and a gentle mist of water once a day. It’s the perfect garden for children to look after.

This is a wonderful project for parents and littles to do together, older children independently, and grown-ups too. I honestly had so much fun making one of my own. You only need a baby succulent, a little container, gravel and potting soil (all in teeny amounts). We also loved adding a tiny animal friend. The supply list is very adaptable to what you have on hand (and you can go on a backyard scavenger hunt for twigs and moss too). So let’s go make a Gina Ktana

DIY Mini Garden (Gina Ktana)

Here’s what we used for our mini garden:

Baby Succulents (or a succulent leaf - it will soon grow into a tiny plant)
Altoids Tin
Tiny animal friends
Potting soil / gravel / sand
Yarn / embroidery floss / bitty pom-poms
Moss / twigs
Scrapbook paper / cardstock / colored pencils
Scissors / white glue

Here’s how we made it:

We started by covering our tin with a mossy colored yarn. We did this by spreading a layer of white glue around the tin and then wrapping the yarn around several times.

Next we layered and glued small twigs and moss on top of the yarn.

Then we filled our garden, first with a small layer of gravel (for draining), and then sand and potting soil on top.

Now for some imagination! We created a little flag bunting by cutting tiny triangles, gluing them onto the embroidery floss and then tying them to very tiny twigs.

Then we decided that our mini garden needed some trees. We made them by wrapping embroidery floss around tiny twigs.

Then glued bitty pom-poms onto the branches.

To personalize our garden, we drew tiny pictures on cardstock and cut them out.

We decided to wrap them in clear contact paper to keep them dry when misting our succulents with water.

When our pictures were done, we picked out a little animal.

And a baby succulent too.

And placed the plant, animal friend and handmade decorations in our mini garden.

And that’s it. We just love our Gina Ktanas They’re all so cute, and have their own personality.

If you have enough baby succulents or leaves, you can make a tiny village of mini gardens too.

You can remind your little that even though they’re small, there’re so many things they can do to help take care of our world, like taking care of a mini Gina. You can even ask them what other things they could do this summer too! Doing our part to help the world is the Jewish value Tikkun Olam.

Would you make a mini garden? What would you use? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to see yours, so tag us on Instagram! If you’d like to learn more about Tikkun Olam and helping our world, be sure to visit our DIY Mitzvah superhero capes, and for more ways to celebrate summer see our Summer Round-up! We’ll be adding sunny crafts, recipes and outings all season long, so be sure to check back!

Happy summer and happy mini gardening!

~Jennifer