• Take a color wheel out to the garden and see if you find a match for each of the "spokes."
• Create annual flowerbeds that demonstrate different color combinations such as planting annuals with warm or cool colored flowers or using analogous, complementary, or monochromatic color schemes.
• Conduct a color hunt in the garden matching squares of paint color samples to plants and talk about the wide variety of shades and hues found in nature.

• Cut out a variety of shapes (e.g., circles, triangles, squares, rectangles) from cardstock or heavy paper. Give each student one of these shapes and ask them to find a matching form in the garden.
• Introduce the students to a few common tree shapes. Record observations about the shapes of trees in and around your garden.

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  Many visual textures are represented in the garden, from fine (generally created by smaller-leaved plants like cosmos or dill) to coarse (such as large-leaved plants like hostas). Compare visual textures to tactile textures — those sensed via touch, such as smooth and soft (lamb's ear) and rough (cucumber leaves).
• Collect samples of leaves with varying visual and tactile textures to display at a discovery station in the classroom (be sure to avoid poisonous plants). Give students an opportunity to explore both visual and tactile textures and ask them to make a written description of each object using at least three adjectives. Next, brainstorm how you might capture these textures using various techniques and materials (e.g., clay, paint, papier mâché).

• Have students make observations in the garden, and ask them to record and express their findings visually, as a pencil sketch, with paints, or via photography.
• For work surfaces, set up portable tables or easels, or give each student clipboards. You can also create your own surfaces by recycling materials, such as old lunchroom trays or pieces of cardboard boxes or wood scraps (watch for rough edges).
• If you want to offer students a specific focus, try a technique used by Georgia O'Keefe. Cut a cardboard frame for each student. Ask students to place the frame somewhere in the garden, then to draw only what's inside the frame with the goal of capturing details.
• Another approach is to ask students to observe the same spot at different times of the day and record changes they observe. See The Changing Garden for a detailed description of this activity.

• Press flowers and leaves. Use them to decorate pictures and stationary, or to make collages.
• Grow gourds for crafting bird houses or other decorative objects.
• Create your own natural dyes from plant materials such as marigolds and indigo.
• Dry or use fresh-cut flowers and leaves to make floral arrangements, such as wreaths.
• Collect pine cones and stones and decorate them as “nature pets.”

Copyright© 2006 National Gardening Association