Resurrection Garden

This activity was inspired by Pinterest and based our instructions on this blog post from JOYfilled Family. A great gift alternative to the standard chocolate this little garden is a wonderful symbol of hope and joy for your family’s prayer space or garden. There are so many different ways of doing this, however, we kept it simple using established seedlings for the sake of time restraints which is a little more costly than raising seeds. If you want to raise seeds, start at the beginning of lent, and by Easter, you will have a wonderful little garden established!

Dowload the handout here

Materials:

• 1 pot water tray
• 1 small terracotta pot
• 1 small terracotta pot tray or medium sized rock
• 1 small bag of pebbles
• 1-2 small trays of violas (purple and gold)
• 2 pots of pearlwort
• Some extra potting mix (optional)
• 5 sticks
• Twine
• Scissors
• flameless tealight

Method:

1. Assemble your materials. Cover the work surface with newspaper if necessary.
2. Put down an intital layer of soil about 1 cm thick. Adjust according to the depth of your tray. We had enough soil between the pots, but some extra potting mix may be necessary.
3. Arrange your tomb in position. It looks great slighly off-center and tiltled slightly up.
4. Take the pearlwort and carefully break it into smaller pieces. The roots will retiain a layer of soil, it is just a matter of laying it on top of the pot and filling in the gaps around it.
5. Plant your violas in a clump next to the ‘tomb’.
6. Take your sticks and break them into 3 long pieces of about 25 cm and 3 short pieces about 10 cm.
7. Using the twine, tie 1 short piece to one long piece in a cross shape.
8. Once you are satisfied with the arrangement of the plants, give them a quick water.
9. Arrange the pebbles so that they cover the hole in the back of the ‘tomb’ and come out to the edge of the tray like a path.
10. Stick the three crosses on top of the ‘hill’ above the ‘tomb’ .
11. Place the tealight inside the tomb and the medium rock or small pot tray over entrance to the ‘tomb’.
12. On Easter Sunday, open the tomb and light the tealight. Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

We used an actual tealight in this shot and learned the hard way that it heats up the pot and started to scorch our plants! For a white light, try a small LED light instead.

Did you know that many of the common plants and flowers we know and love had names that were religiously inspired? Why not plant some of these to add an extra layer of symbolism to you resurrection garden. Check out CathFamily’s Mary’s Garden for more information.

For more Easter crafts, prayers and family rituals, check out:

• Lord of Joy
• Peace Tree
• The Peace of Christ
• Stations of Glory