Childrens Garden

The second of the Wagner Farm Gardens is slated to be the Childrens Garden.

If you wish to donate The Wagner Farm Arboretum Foundation will be selling items for the Arboretum allowing you to have a place for your name to show your support. The following items are available: Brick Paving Stones, Park Benches, Trees and Life Size Cows! Click Naming Opportunities for details. A list of specific items needed for the Children's Garden is available. Click Children's Garden to view the list. All items may be purchased by contacting Roberta at 908-647-4632, rmonahan@wfafnj.org

A Garden for Children
by Jackie Kaar Paltjon

I envision the children's garden to be a place that children will remember and will ask to return to, time and time again. It will be a place where a child can run down a yellow brick path, hide amongst the tall, swaying grasses, or perch atop a grassy hill while surveying the surrounding gardens. By placing an overhead arbor at the entrance to the garden a feeling of entering a room of sorts is created. The focal point and centerpiece of the garden will be a rustic cedar gazebo that could be used as a meeting place or a point of "safety" in a game of tag! Surrounding the gazebo will be an alphabet garden where each letter of the alphabet will have a corresponding plant that will possess either a fragrance or a texture that will stimulate a child's senses. There will be a boxwood maze whose secret is a sunflower house in the center where children and adults alike could sit and dream. A winding path made of recycled blue glass will lead to a musica l chime that sounds when a child steps upon it. A large section of the garden will be dedicated to a butterfly garden. There will be various perennials and annuals that attract butterflies and hummingbirds alike. In order to reflect on the original use of this land, we are placing two life-size, fiberglass cows in the garden that could be sit upon, petted, or photographed! What will make this garden special is the attention to detail and the overall goal of educating the youngsters about the environment without them even realizing they are learning! This will be a joyful, colorful, textural, exciting place where the community can come together with their children to experience the marvels of mother nature that many children miss out in this hectic, high tech world in which we live.