Enrichment Activity #6

Engineering A Zen or Dish Garden

This enrichment activity will have you engineering a plan to design and plant a Zen Garden or Dish Garden or that symbolizes “Her-Story” from your video documentary interview. As a thank you gift, please feel free to gift your final dish garden to the woman leader you interviewed.

Dish gardens are miniature gardens that combine groups of plants in a decorative container to create fashionable home decor that dresses up a living space with interesting textures, unique shapes, and organic color and can symbolize a memorable time, place and/or person to celebrate their life.

According to Bloom IQ - "While the origins of dish and Zen gardens are obscure, they are said to have begun centuries ago as a Japanese artistic hobby as well as a model for landscape architects. The leading landscape gardeners of Japan would create miniature models of their work to help customers visualize the end result. Three stones were always placed in these Japanese gardens to symbolize Heaven, Earth and Mankind. Americans became fascinated by these tiny landscapes when travelers would bring them home from Japan or make them upon their return."

For this activity, have students first sketchnote a drawing of their planned visual dish garden. Then have your students go on a scavenger hunt to seek, find and collect a variety of outdoor nature elements that can be used with respect to the environment, and craft supplies that they have or you have at your disposal for your students to create their dish gardens.

Have your students also utilize recycled cans, jars, bins or pots to use as their base of their dish gardens. Make available some potting soil, gardening tools and gloves and let the creative engineering and design begin.

Make sure to take a few digital photos too, to contribute back to upload and share into our "Her-Story" Final Project Page by School" to celebrate your final dish gardening projects.