Super Easy Kids Project: Coffee Cup Marigolds

Making Coffee Cup Marigolds is easy: simply collect 15-20 coffee cups (that’s only about a week and a half of caffeine, right?) from your favorite local coffee shops. The more you collect, the more you’ll start to covet certain designs.

Give the cups a good rinse. Poke holes in the bottom of each cup for drainage (2-4 works best) using a pair of scissors. Then, you can either fill each cup 2/3 of the way with potting soil and plant seeds at 1 inch depth, or transplant a seedling on top of ~2 inches of soil and fill the rest of the cup so that it is compact.

We chose to plant Marigolds because you can find them in any region and they are very easy to grow– but you can do this with any other plant that’s in season (like pea shoots and fennel, if its early May). Give the cups a generous water after you’ve planted the seeds/seedlings, and leave them in the sun where they can grow and drain (remember: there are holes in the bottom and the water will seep through). Once they sprout, try spelling letters with the blossoms. (We had to do a “G” for Garden Collage– we couldn’t resist.)