Make a decorative Australian animal themed succulent garden as a fun gardening project with kids.

This easy garden idea makes a fun small world for imaginary play or a lovely handmade gift idea for somebody special.

You might also like our frog habitat garden

Every time my mum comes over to visit she admires the dinosaur succulent garden on our front porch. The looks over at the Frog habitat garden and exclaims how well it’s doing. When she looks out the back door and sees the dead sticks in pots which make up our herb and veggie garden and the lush bunch of weeds in our garden beds she tells me to stick to succulents.

I do try hard, but sometimes I forget to water things and it’s a hot, dry country.

Succulents are the perfect plant for non-green thumbs because they are very forgiving and literally thrive on neglect. They love good drainage and plenty of sun, plus they don’t need to be watered daily so they do very well for me.

Because Mum loves our themed potted succulents so much Miss K and I decided to make her one for Mothers Day this year. She loved it!

How to make an Australian animal succulent garden

It’s very easy to put your own creative spin on a succulent garden by adding rocks and a few plastic animals. We bought these Aussie animals from our local toy store for a few dollars each. The pot and plants came from Bunnings. Bunnings also have a big supply of landscaping rocks, but we had most of these already and just needed some earthy coloured dirt. For this I’ve used some decorative sand I found at our local dollar store in the candle section.

You will need:

• A wide, shallow pot
• Rocks for drainage
• Cactus & Succulent potting mix (or you can also mix ordinary potting mix with sand to create your own cactus mix)
• Succulents
• Rocks to decorate
• Earth coloured rocks or sand
• Blue glass beads

How to:

Place rocks in the base of your pot to assist with drainage.

Add potting mix and plants.

Water the plants in.

Map out where you want the water to go, and place a line of small rocks around it. Fill the inside of this outline with glass beads. On the outside of this outline add the earth coloured rocks or sand. Finally, add a few larger rocks for landscaping. We’ve used ones we collected from nature whilst out on a walk.

Then just add animals.

You can make your succulent garden as big or small as you like. This one is fairly large, but if you choose a pot half the size you’d need less plants and it would work out cheaper to make. Succulents are also VERY easy to grow from cuttings so you could try that if you have some already in your garden.

Australian animal succulent garden

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Easy decorative succulent garden featuring Australian animals

Materials

• A wide, shallow pot
• Rocks for drainage
• Cactus & Succulent potting mix (or you can also mix ordinary potting mix with sand to create your own cactus mix)
• Succulents
• Rocks to decorate
• Earth coloured rocks or sand
• Blue glass beads

Tools

• gardening hand tools
• hose

Instructions

1. Place rocks in the base of your pot to assist with drainage.
2. Add potting mix and plants.
3. Water the plants in.
4. Map out where you want the water to go, and place a line of small rocks around it. Fill the inside of this outline with glass beads. On the outside of this outline add the earth coloured rocks or sand. 
5. Add a few larger rocks for landscaping. 
6. Add animals

More garden activities kids will love

• Make a succulent fairy garden
• Use items from your garden to create gorgeous garden “earth art”
• A dinosaur garden is another fun small world garden you can make with kids
• This easy frog habitat garden was put together from what we had at home
• Make some recycled lid sun catchers to hang in a tree outside
• These garden rocks in a drawstring bag are a fun way to inspire imaginary play