Plant a Garden for Imaginative Play

Plant a garden in a tub for the perfect place to play pretend!

This is a fabulous activity for spring, or any time of the year. Real plants and dirt make the perfect scenery for all sorts of pretend play adventures!

Gresham (6 years old) loves to play with realistic toy animals.  We have a collection of Schleich animals, and recently he has gotten in to the Safari Toob animals because their small size enables him to them around with him.  After Christmas, I made him a felt play board for his animals, and that has been fun.  He decided, though, that his animals needed a more realistic play space also.

So we planted a garden for imaginative play!

This post was originally published in March 2013 and updated in February 2026.

To make the garden, I recycled a plastic tub that used to hold toys but now has a broken lid.

Supplies Needed:

• A large plastic storage container
• Top soil
• Rocks – to layer in the bottom of the tub to help with drainage
• Small plants
• A plastic container to be a pond in the garden
• Drill
• Small shovel

Step 1:  I used a power drill to make some holes in the bottom of the tub for drainage.  The boys were fairly impressed that Mom could figure out how to use Dad’s drill! (It was really easy to make the holes, but it’s fun to be a hero!)

Step 2:  Cover the bottom of the container with a layer of rocks to help promote drainage.

Step 3: Cover the rocks with a thick layer of topsoil and plant your plants! We chose plants from the ground cover options at Home Depot.

Aidan (age 9) had so much fun taking some of the photos for this post (which is why I’m actually in one).  In fact, he was having so much fun that he took forty pictures of the drilling the holes step.  What a goof!

Gresham asked if he could have the water dish that we purchased for our little box turtle that didn’t make it to use as a pond, and I said he could.  It really made a great pond.  If you don’t happen to have an unused pet dish lying around, any small plastic bowl would be just as fun to use as a pond!

In addition to animals, the garden is the perfect place to play with Lego minifigures!

The best part about this garden is that it can be played with outdoors or indoors. Bring it inside and put it on a table or on the floor. If you drilled holes in the bottom of the container, be sure to put a towel under it when you bring it indoors to catch any drips.

Store your garden in a tub where it can get some sunlight, and don’t forget to water it!

If you take care of your garden, you can use this play space for many months.

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links