Once, before being corrupted by his video-game obsessed peers and his parents’ too lax “screen-time” rules, my son actually enjoyed gardening.  He would toddle around after me planting seeds, watering plants, and picking any tomato that showed the slightest hint of redness.  At one time, he knew which plants in our garden were edible better than most adults. Now, my son accuses me of having too many “useless flowers” in my front herb garden. Determined to help my son recapture the love of gardening, I gave him a sales pitch I knew he could not refuse: “We’re going to make a Minecraft garden.”

 

Project 1: Failure in miniature.

My first plan was to take some old boards from discarded bookshelves and use them to build a combination sandbox and raised miniature Minecraft garden.  I made a terraced “hill” out of scrap 2×4’s and used a cement mixing trough we had lying around for a “lake”.  My son and I built and painted a “Steve” character, villager, ocelot, and cow to inhabit it.

On the plus side:

• My son got to practice carpentry skills building the frame and figures with me.
• Painting the little figures was a fun diversion on a day the power went out.
• Frogs love the little pond, and we have tadpoles every summer.

On the minus side:

• My son was slightly too old for the sandbox and has used it exactly once since we built it.
• My son complained early on that the garden “doesn’t look enough like Minecraft.”
• The Japanese holly bushes I planted as “trees” got way too big before the ground covers filled in, and had to be moved elsewhere.  The tiny dwarf boxwoods I got to replace them are definitely “slow growing” as advertised, and my son will probably be in college by the time they get big enough to look like miniature trees.
• I chose my main ground cover poorly.  The Irish moss looked lovely in the pots at the garden center, but it was not happy in our sultry Carolina summers.  The first year it sat there and glowered at me.  The second year it shriveled up and died.  I replaced it with a fast growing sedum, which I should have done from the start.
• The whole thing takes an insane amount of weeding and trimming for the tiny space it occupies.
• I think the bookshelf boards we salvaged for it were originally painted with oil-based paint.  The green we painted over them started peeling off after a few months.
• I neglected to put waterproofing sealant over the paint on the figures, and the paint-job on them is rapidly deteriorating as well.
• Neither my son, nor I like to weed it. The results are what you would expect.

Project 2: If at first you don’t succeed…

After the failure of our first attempt, my son surprised me by lobbying to try again.  He said he wanted to try growing the real versions of plants he commonly grew in his Minecraft game.  As I wanted to expand my vegetable garden anyway and was still trying to find a way to bring him back into the gardening fold, I agreed to his plan.

The second attempt was much more successful.  The poppies and some of the sunflowers were no shows, but the rest of the garden grew beautifully.  Although my son sometimes grumbled about helping me, he dug, planted, weeded, and harvested with me.  Looking back, he claims he actually enjoyed some of it.

In Minecraft, all flowers bloom all the time, and wheat goes from seed to harvest in about 10 minutes. In real life, my son and I watched the garden unfold over the course of the season.  I’m sure when he’s 30 he’ll also value the educational aspect of that.

Did these projects cure my son of his screen obsession, and give him back the gardening fervor of his toddler-hood? Hardly.  Were they an enjoyable pastime for the whole family that got us all out in the garden? Definitely!