My Son turned 3 last weekend and like last two even this year we could have Eco-celebration! The first birthday was farm themed, read here. So this time I came up with an idea of ‘grow your own food; themed birthday party in his nursery with his friends.

When I told him we are going to have a growing food theme birthday, he was very excited. Mainly because he just wanted cake, decoration and his friends singing, clapping for him. But I would like to believe, maybe other reason can be he is been exposed to nature early on.

To keep our birthday tradition, even this year we had DIY décor and the best part was, this year the birthday boy helped me making the decoration!

Garden themed birthday in his nursery

My little gardener has planted seeds and seen how things grow before, here is his first planting experiencing. However this time I took an opportunity to make him aware of how plants survive and why plants are so important. Some plants and trees give us food, we can eat either leaves or fruits. (Roots and stems of plants was a bit difficult for him to understand at this age). So plants are very important, we need to take care of them. If they give us food then what food they need? Soil, Sun and Water! We made a bunting keep in mind, what thing plants need and how to take care of plants.

When I told Ruhaan’s teacher in the nursery about our birthday theme, she liked the idea too. But because of lack of time, we couldn’t have planting activity with his friends, so instead, I decided to give potted edible plants to his friends as return favors. In search of edible plants in kids friendly small pot, I ended up exploring UAE’s hidden gem for garden lovers, Plant Souq in Warsan. I couldn’t help but bought a few herbs for my window garden.

Return favors potted rocket plants

From there I could manage to get Rocket/ Jarjeer plants for all his classmates and even teachers. We wrapped the plants at home and wrote a message for their parents on how to take care of this plant, mentioned it’s edible. I even put a tag of each child’s name in a plant, to make it personalized. I have seen, when we write his name on any plant, he is more caring and feel responsible towards that plant! I really hope the kids and parents would have liked our natural/eco and educational gift!

Potted plant chocolate cake

To complete our theme, we even got made the chocolate cake looks like a potted plant, I planted clean fresh mint stems on top of it, just before the cake cutting. The mint even tasted great with yummy chocolate cake! My little gardener was so delighted to have a birthday celebration in the nursery, especially when everyone sang the happy birthday song and clapped!

On the day of his birthday, which was on the weekend we took him to Emirates Park Zoo, to meet his favorite animal Elephant. But at the end of our visit, his favorite animal changed from elephant to monkeys! No surprise, monkeys were jumping, hanging from branches and were drawing attention from all kids!

Ruhaan was very happy to feed animals, we fed grass to monkeys, chickens, camels, zebras, deer, sheep, goats, and many different animals but the giraffe was our favorite. I never fed giraffe before, it’s tongue is quite long, it touches you when you feed them, as they grab food from your hand with their tongue. I don’t know if that is the reason but I felt a lot of love for this majestic animal! 😀

Emirates Park Zoo

Ruhaan loved cuddling cute lambs and feeding them milk from a bottle. We even watched lioness and a lion fighting over food provided to them. It was thrilling though. I personally don’t like to see wild animals in captivity but the animals in emirates park zoo seem to be well looked after. And the zoo is a great place in the urban area, where we can make our kids aware of wildlife and their conservation. So it’s very important to keep animals in captivity in the best possible condition. A roaring lion in another zoo, kept in a very small cage is such injustice and I have even seen people teasing that poor king of the jungle. It is a very bad example and if we don’t respect wildlife our kids will, unfortunately, learn the same from us.

Till now we have celebrated each of Ruhaan’s birthday with animals, it is always a lot of fun for the whole family and we are hoping to raise an animal lover and Eco-conscious child! I am sure next year, he will have his own plans but I’ll definitely try to make the celebration Eco-friendly. 🙂

Read here a complete guide to hosting an eco-friendly birthday party.

If you love gardening then find here some great tips about container gardening.  Here you can find how to create an edible vertical garden on a budget.