•  
• ENJOY YOUR VISIT
  • Events Calendar
  • Visiting the Garden
  • Directions
  • What's In Bloom
  • For Families
  • Flower Shows
  • Garden Trams
  • Wellness/Lifestyle
    Programs
  • Dining
  • The Garden Shop
• AT THE GARDEN
  • Plant Collections
  • General Info
  • Explore the Garden
  • Group Visits
  • Corporate and
    Special Events
  • Press Room
  • Employment
  • Contact Us
• YOUR GARDEN
  • Gardening Help
  • Plant Information
    Service
  • Illinois'
    Best Plants
• EDUCATION
  • Adult and Degree Programs
  • Lenhardt Library
  • Pre-K to Grade 12 Education
  • After-school and Camp
  • Community Gardening
  • Horticultural Therapy
• CONSERVATION
  • Plant Science and Conservation
  • Science Laboratories
  • Staff
  • Plant Science Center
  • Training & Education
  • Resources
  • Plant Science Blog
  • Save the Plants. Save the Planet.
• SUPPORT US
  • Membership
  • Give to the Garden
  • President's Circle
  • Board of Directors
  • To Volunteer
  • Annual Report

enjoy your visit — for families

Garden Tips: Make Yourself Green This Halloween

You know all those shiny vinyl, plastic, and rubber costumes that are made so cheaply and cost so much? The ones beckoning from cluttered shops to which you have to drive, using up gas and your precious time? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Do yourself, your kids, and the environment a favor by sticking close to home and engaging your creative side this Halloween. Not so creative? Uninterested in spending hours sewing complicated costumes? Not to worry. These tips are easy, quick, and—best of all—effective.

Now go grab some empty pillowcases. How easy was that? Goodbye to plastic pumpkin candy carriers! Your kids can lug around their loot in a traditional and even slightly creepy fabric container (who knows what else is inside the pillowcase?). Use paint or markers on the pillowcases, and you and your kids can make them as cute (or as creepy) as you would like!

OK, put on your thinking cap as you look over those items in your recycling bins. The big cardboard box? SpongeBob SquarePants, perhaps, or a walking box of, say, a favorite cereal. Cardboard boxes are also ideal for making robots. It may take some paint or markers and get a tad messy, what with cutting holes out and dabbling around, but it’s quality bonding time with the kids!

Empty milk jugs? Tin cans? Think carton helmets, or milk jug luminaries lighting the way to your front door; tin cans can become lanterns or foil-and-can robot costumes. One enterprising fifth-grader hopped into a big (empty) garbage bag, arms and legs poking through. She puffed up the bag with balled-up newsprint, aided by her mother, who then loosely gathered the bag’s top around the girl’s neck so it wouldn’t fall down; finally, the girl donned her bicycle helmet, to which she had secured a lightweight, very small garbage can brimming with paper wrappers, egg cartons—nonsmelly stuff piled high and taped together to striking effect. A large yardwaste paper bag would work as well, topped with twigs and leaves. All completely recyclable post-Halloween, of course!

If your daughter prefers being a princess to being a garbage can, she can find all kinds of inexpensive and recycled options in a secondhand clothing store. Head for the section of used formal and prom dresses. While you’re there, why not pull together a dapper 60s, 70s, or 80s look for your son? One mother found a Hawaiian muumuu, straw beach bag, and huge sunglasses, and ended up looking very tropical as she escorted her trick-or-treaters around the block. Some costumes may not even require a trip to the secondhand store. The torn pants and t-shirts that don’t fit can be “distressed” to create a hobo or scarecrow costume.

One more thing: remember when you purchase your pumpkins, cornstalks, straw bales, and other natural material to buy locally, and if possible, organically. Organic candy is harder to come by, but there are more varieties available than ever, such as YummyEarth and College Farm, among many others. And that’s it: Garden tips on going green this Halloween. Now shoo! Boo!