Make Your Own Simple Resurrection Garden this Easter!

Instructions for making a garden with grass seed or artificial plants. Both feature a tomb with a stone to be rolled away on Easter morning!

Every year, our family makes a Resurrection Garden to help us stay focused on the true meaning of Easter and the days leading up to it.  It’s become a loverly part of our Lent and Easter celebrations.

If you are looking for even more ideas for Lent and Easter, check out my Liturgical Calendar Guide for Protestant Families and Celebrating the Church Year Online Guide.

If you’ve never heard of a Resurrection Garden, it is truly a simple, but beautiful family friendly activity that can be quickly put together in an afternoon a few weeks before Easter.  And then, on Easter morning, the children can roll away the stone to an empty tomb!

In this post, I’m going to share 2 different ways to make a Resurrection Garden. Our family used to always make a grass seed version, but several of the houses we have lived in did not have good enough light for the grass to grow, so it was better to make one out of artificial plants. The artificial plant one might also be a better option for small children or overwhelmed moms!

Resurrection Garden with Real Grass

Supplies needed:

• basket or container, lined with plastic
• potting soil
• grass seed
• rocks
• small can or terracotta pot
• large flat stone
• 2-6 small sticks
• twine, jute, or string
• candles
• a small spray bottle
• any other added touches you’d like to add, i.e. flowers, plastic animals, etc.

We like to use a round basket with a bit of a lip (like this one) for our garden.  I have tried other containers in the past, but the round basket looks nicer.

Line it with plastic wrap or a trash bag, and then let the kids pile potting soil on top of the plastic. 

A tin can or terracotta pot works best for the tomb with a flat rock over the front of it.  I found our flat rock on a nature hike one day and picked it up for the specific purpose of becoming our tomb stone!

We cover the can or pot with regular soil made into mud and patted in place. Then, place river rock or rocks you’ve found over the surface of the can and all around the edges of the basket to hide the plastic. You could also hot glue rocks to the surface of the can that is exposed.

NOTE: I have tried to plant grass seed over the top of the tomb, but it never works well.

Then, we place votive candles like these all around the garden. I love how the candles look at night all lit up around the Resurrection Garden! You will need several of the votive candles so you can change them out as needed.

Next, the kids added the 3 crosses we lashed together with jute years ago. You could just add Jesus’ cross, but our basket was large enough to accomodate all 3.

After that, we sprinkle grass seed over the top of the potting soil, spraying it down with mist from a water bottle that we will keep handy to be able to mist our garden a couple of times a day over the next few weeks.

On Easter, we will roll the stone away and add some flowers to our garden, which by then, is hopefully lush with green grass!  The years when we’ve had a really great stand of grass, I let the kids cut it throughout Lent with preschool scissors! We have to tend our garden, you know!

This is what it looks like lit up at night before the grass grew.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the years we had a really good stand of grass! Not sure how that happened, but it’s proof positive not all projects turn out, and when they do, I don’t always manage to get photos of it!

Resurrection Garden with Artificial Plants

As I mentioned earlier, several of our homes did not have sufficient light for real grass to grow and it is terribly disappointing to the children (and their mama!) to find their Resurrection Garden grass-less.

So, I came up with a simple alternative to real grass – artificial plants that don’t have to be watered and don’t need sunlight!

Here’s what you need…

Supplies needed:

• a round dish (I love the terracotta plant saucer I found!)
• potting soil
• moss or other “ground cover”
• artificial plants
• rocks
• 2-6 sticks
• twine, jute, or string
• tin can or terracotta pot
• large flat stone
• any other decorations you’d like to add on Easter morning, i.e. flowers, plastic animals, etc.

Add soil to the dish and lay the tin can or pot in the soil. Add moss over the top of the pot and fill in the dish with rocks, artificial plants, and candles.

You will also want to lash together the sticks to create 1-3 crosses. I like to put these in the background behind the tomb.

Definitely try this fun project with your family this year, and keep your eyes on the cross! 

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