You could try looking through the Folk Life vendor list to find crafty people who make yard art: http://www.nwfolklifefestival.org/information/merchants/

City Peoples has a couple of good grass blends that you can buy in bulk (by the pound), and their blends are made for Seattle's weather, etc.

Try the Restore. http://www.re-store.org/index.php

What type is scraps? 2x4s, ply wood, pallet wood? Try contacting cabinet makers if you're looking for nicer scraps, pallets you can find for free in areas where there are warehouses ( sodo or George town) you can place an ad on craigslist but be specific in what you're looking for. You can find an impressive amount in dumpsters if you go that route look for large dumpsters. Contacting fabricators directly will sometimes get them to save stuff if you pick it up in a timely manner.

Thanks for the photos. So helpful!

(PS: Love your avitar!)

I think morels are in the category of mushrooms that grow better in areas that recently had fires. My uncle got in a huge fire over burning an area of the yard (I think it has something to do with the ash content of the soil) but my aunt couldn't complain once she got the shrooms. I think it helps that they live at a high altitude in the boonies but you might research fire in conjunction with them

Try looking online for kits. It basically gets you a mulchy presslog full of inoculate. Keep it in a moist, dark place, and you can pick mushrooms right off it for several months. They make them for all kinds...shittakes, enoki, portobello...even morels, I think. You'll likely have better success then sporofying your backyard.

Good luck! I've always wanted to try this, so let me know how it turns out.

(P.S. if you want to hunt morels, here's a tip: go to places that have burned recently. They like that.)

A few more to add to the great ideas above:
- Sorrel (the lemony taste is fun with kids)
- Radishes (if they are visiting regularly, since it grows to fast - they could plant them and then come back in a few weeks to harvest)
- Herbs they can taste and/or smell: lemon balm, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, oregano, chives
- Berries of all sorts

Have a kid-sized watering can (so it's not too heavy for them) and have them help water.

Another fun idea is to have theme garden - i.e. a pizza garden, where you grow tomatoes/oregano/pizza toppings, or a rainbow garden with flowers from all the colors of the rainbow. You get the idea.

If you are in Seattle, you could walk through the Children's Gardens at Seattle Tilth (multiple sites), Magnuson P-Patch and Marra Farm for inspiration.

The northwestern bleeding heart! So beautiful and local

Seattle Tilth is going to be offering some workshops at Cal Anderson Park in June about container and apartment gardening. See the Cal Anderson Park Alliance website for details, or maybe the Seattle Tilth site as well.

Lettuce does pretty well in partial shade.

OOOOOOH-HOO-HOO! You have touched upon my current obsession. Read on!

Here at Oxbow Farm, we are cureently putting in a Children's Garden for visiting future farmers. We are going the yummy/crazy/peculiar route with our plant choices. Here are some:
Purple veggies!--carrots ,broccoli, beans, cabbage, tomatoes...they all come in shades of purple. How ROYAL! And excellent.
BIG FOLIAGE--plants that are either HUGE--elecampagne, tree collards--or that are towering--corn, scarlet runner beans, sorghum, sunflowers.
Colorful things--rainbow chard!
Sweet things--and and all berries, sorghum, stevia; good-smelling things--fennel,mint, lavendar
Fuzzy things--lamb's ear
Edible flowers--violets, nasturtiums, borage

Tons of others, of course. Have a ball!

It's always fun to sprout an avocado pit as you can actually measure the growth progress day to day. Using toothpicks to position it over a glass vessel filled with water there is the daily growth, water being taken in and transpired as well as the roots growing. If traveling back by car they can take their plants home to continue the observations. If the visit is going to be relatively short, start some now at intervals so that they can see the relative growth change over time right away.

Get some venus fly traps to interact with. Usually explanatory information comes with them.

A mimosa or "sensitive tree" plant is fun as you get to see it react to touch and slowly recover its upright branch positions.

Build a cairn.

Are they round or jagged? A weird question, I know, but it determines what you can do with them.

If they're jagged, you can use them to build a little rock wall if you have any place where you need a little more support.

If they're round (and/or jagged), use them in areas where you have drainage issues or need to lay down any kind of walkway. Typically, you lay the largest rocks at the bottom (digging down into the dirt to make room for them if necessary), and then fill in on top with successively smaller rocks until you get back to the soil surface level. If you're doing this for drainage purposes, the rock should extend 8-10 inches at least below the surface level of the soil. You can make drain channels this way, and help prevent water from draining where you don't want it to.

I have not personally used grow bags, and cannot honestly say "yay" or "nay". Many gardeners find them to be a great alternative to more permanent containers or raised beds, especially when you want to garden and have limited space.

So, here's some info:

1. There is valuable information about Smart Pots on www.smartpots.com. Three major universities, including Texas A & M, Oregon State, and Univ. of New Hampshire, have done research using Smart Pots (see www.smartpots.com/academic-studies) and their findings were quite positive.

2. Gardener's Supply catalog sells their own patented polypropylene bags for vegetables and herbs. According to their catalog, you may store the bags and reuse the following year. Being able to use them 1-2 years is a clear disadvantage. Also, I wonder about the wisdom of using polypropylene to grow vegetables.

3. Finally, with a little ingenuity, you could create your own grow bags. Check out http://www.ehow.com/grow-vegetables-in-bags for how-to information.

Happy Gardening!

Congrats on your patch! Mixing in some compost and then covering it with mulch will help mend and keep the soil you do have until you're ready to plant in the spring.

Seattle Tilth has a great book. "Maritime NW Garden guide" which gives a good breakdown of what you should do by season. They also have a new book coming out soon about urban gardening and I hear they discuss rooftop gardens and the like, which may be useful as you plan your spring planting.

old tubs. google it.

Wine bottles as edging.

http://gardenfowl.com/gardening/how-to-build-a-hot-bed-out-of-recycled-glass-bottles/

http://nyackbackyard.blogspot.com/2008/10/raised-beds-bottle-beds-and-papier.html

The things that grow naturally under cedars - Oregon grape and salal.

Oxalis (as Marty suggested already...although watch out, because it spreads), ferns (especially native sword ferns), and hostas.

Cedars are native, so I'd go with anything else that's native to Washington woodland forests and likes the shade. Marty's suggestion that you plant redwood sorrel is brilliant, though that will require soil that's a little more damp at the surface. Other similar leafy plants include bleeding hearts (dicentra), various hostas, ferns (sword fern and maidenhair), false lily of the valley/solomon's seal, and bunchberries (aka creeping dogwood, one of my favorites). If your soil is a little drier, you can try woodier plants such as salal (waxy green leaves often seen in bouquets) or Oregon grape. The bonus of planting these kinds of plants mean that once they are established, they require very little care.

This appears to be a fantastic website on native woodland plants for our area:

http://wnps.org/landscaping/herbarium/index.html

Huckleberries do well in this environment. They like damp, acidic soil, and do well in the shade. The fruit is delicious, though maybe not so good from the front yard with high dog pee potential.

Redwood Sorrel (Oxalis oregana) grows beautifully under cedar hence it's name.

The problem isn't so much the mulchy crap, or the acidity, even though those things are actually problematic. The problem is the shade. What you're looking at now, a virtual desert, is kind of the natural state of the understory of a cedar grove. Dark and dry.

However! Aside from chopping down the cedar to build a nice humidor, which by the way isn't a terrible idea, You do have options. How about some bulbs? I planted some tulips and daffodils last fall in a very shady area, and it worked well. They'll pop up and bloom even without much sun. Add some lime in the hole you dig to fix the acid soil issue. Do a google search for other shade lovers (hostas?) but beware that the dryness and shade are so extreme under that huge cedar that you'll have to work hard to provide them a happy place. Specifically, you can cut more branches and amend the soil.