an article and book review from Ethel Fried’s Garden Notebook
I still remember the hours I spent as a child in the backyard, playing make-believe under the foliage of a small weeping cherry tree, making dolls from hollyhock blossoms, watching grasshoppers and butterflies.
I can’t help but feel sad that too many kids these days miss out on experiences like this and are actually disconnected from the natural world and all its wonders. either they’re overscheduled, too busy with all the electronic gadgetry in their lives, or their parents are too concerned about the dangers lurking in the backyard.
Many kids have never seen a vegetable growing, let alone experienced the magic of planting a seed and seeing it sprout. They’ve never seen a bird sitting on a nest, or a butterfly sipping nectar.
It’s not just urban kids who often have only asphalt to play on. I rarely see children in my suburban neighborhood playing outside in their landscaped yards much any more. This concerns me because they aren’t just missing out exploring the outdoors. I believe that children who grow up without this sense of wonder will be less aware of the importance of protecting our fragile environment when they become adults. That’s why I also believe that gardeners in particular have some responsibility to help connect a child to the earth.
Molly Dannenmaier agrees. A former children’s editor of Garden Design magazine, where she looked for new ways to pique a child’s natural interest in the outdoor world, she is the author of “A Child’s Garden,” first published in 1998.
That book became a valuable resource for parents, educators, garden designers, and park administrators who enthusiastically embraced her concepts for re-connecting children with the natural world. Now there’s a newly updated version from Timber Press ($19.95 softcover) that continues and expands these concepts with some 60 creative ideas for making a garden “come alive” for children.
But helping children become more attuned to nature is about more than developing an environmental awareness. As Dannenmaier points out, studies show that children do better mentally, physically and emotionally when exposed the the natural world. And there is evidence that being exposed to the intricate interconnections of nature’s cycles can increase intelligence.
She writes, “People and animals in complex, constantly changing environments show an increase in the number and complexity of the neural connections in their brains: They become smarter.” If that’s not enough of an incentive for making a child friendly garden, I don’t know what is!
As valuable as visits to zoos and botanical gardens can be, these are generally highly structured “do not touch, ” “do not pick” sorts of places. Dannenmaier’s focus, rather, is on creating spaces where children are free to explore with little or no parental guidance, where they can climb, dig, splash, collect stones, bugs or seedpods and pick the flowers. To do that she takes her readers on a guided tour in words and gorgeous pictures through a number of imaginative private and public gardens that have been designed specifically to draw children in and provide ample opportunities for them to fully explore their world.
It is a tour packed with innovative landscape designs all along the way, ranging from complex water features to simple sandboxes or rope swings. Even though you may not have the space or money to replicate many of the projects described, you will certainly come away with lots of ideas. One of my favorites shows how the ubiquitous basketball hoop can be made an attractive part of garden design.
There are several tried and true ways of attracting children to a garden that relate to how children actually play rather than to what might appeal to adults. They include water, places for digging, opportunities for make-believe and something to climb on. Kannenmaier provides lots of suggestions for each.
But if you think such gardens wouldn’t be very appealing to adults, think again. “Like children’s literature and films”, she writes “the best children’s gardens are are those that appeal as much to parents as to their offspring because they touch some universal chord born in childhood.”
The most crucial requirements, Dannenmaier says, are places such as grassy or mulch-covered areas where children can run about freely, and places such as weeping trees, shrub borders, arbors or even the old stand-by bean-pole tepees, where they can be private and feel hidden – all certainly easy enough to incorporate into a backyard landscape.
Although Dannenmaier does devote a few paragraphs to safety in the garden, her focus is primarily on the risks posed by animals that bite or sting, toxic plants and similar hazards, and how to handle them. I was disappointed that, except for a brief sentence in a later chapter on attracting wildlife, she does not include mention of garden chemicals as a hazard for children.
but in spite of that complaint, this is a marvelous idea-paced book I wish I’d had when my children were little.
Readers can write to Ethel Fried’s Garden Notebook at pmedeiros@journalinquirer.com
