Magazine/Newspaper Features
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX) 2007-04-10 Section: Life & Arts Edition: Tarrant Page: E1
They can dig it
How does a child's garden grow? With lessons about science, hard work and the discovery that vegetables aren't so yucky after all. — LIZ STEVENS Special to the Star-Telegram
"This is not fun, Mom." For the past six or seven minutes, my 5-year-old son, Max, and I had been planting flower seeds in a new bed in our back yard. I let him sprinkle pinches of tiny lobelia seeds over the soil and push sunflower seeds into the earth. But suddenly, to my disappointment, he was ready to bolt.
"I'm gonna ride my bike," he announced. And off he ran.
It was far from my first attempt to engage Max in the garden. In fact, this spring I gave him his own plot of dirt; I even bribed him (with a Slurpee) to join me on a trip to the nursery.
Why go to all the effort? Because the rewards of gardening with your children will trump the frustrations, say horticulture professionals and teachers: Gardening gets kids off the sofa and outside, teaches them to care for the Earth and presents a golden opportunity for spending quality time together.
"So much of life these days for kids is watching — watching a screen or watching a teacher do a demonstration," says Gail Manning, education horticulturist at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Gardening, by contrast, is hands-on learning.
And sparking the interest of elementary-school-age children and younger usually requires very little effort. After all, we're talking dirt and worms and flowers — stuff kids are naturally drawn to.
"Children let down their guard and open their hearts outside," says Elizabeth Samudio. "And so do parents. ... It's good, wholesome, free entertainment."
Samudio, owner of Elizabeth Anna's Old World Gardens in Fort Worth, grew up in the Pacific Northwest where gardening was, for her, "second nature — or maybe first nature." Years ago, as a single mother of two boys, she grew all the family's vegetables in the back yard and encouraged her sons to help. By the time they were 4 or 5 years old, she notes, they had their own gardening tools — and not the plastic kind.
"Kids love seeing things grow," says Samudio. "I never taught them that they couldn't go into the garden, that they couldn't go into the flower beds. They learned that bees are your friend."
Samudio's third and youngest son inspired parts of her first children's book, Butterfly Awa y (Green Tales, $19.95), which will be published just in time for Earth Day.
"If you teach children at a young age to take care of the Earth," she says, noting the therapeutic role nature plays in her sons' lives, "the Earth takes care of them."
But there's an even more immediate and exciting benefit for parents: "Research shows that if you grow it, they will eat it," says Dotty Woodson, Tarrant County Extension Service agent. Woodson leads a gardening program at the county's Juvenile Detention Center, and her group recently harvested their cool-weather crops, with most going to the Tarrant Area Food Bank. But Woodson kept enough to make the boys a giant salad.
They scoffed, of course. "But almost every single one of them came back" for seconds, she says.
Educational bonuses
Gardening may seem to some to be a quaint, even dated, activity for 21st-century children, but parents should take their cues from the folks whose job it is to create educated citizens out of their kiddos: teachers. Vegetable and flower gardens created and cared for by students have blossomed in recent years, with gardening a vital part of many schools' curriculum.
Science is the most obvious subject that plants and flowers lend themselves to, of course. But there's also math (How many plants do you need to fill a 6-foot-by-6-foot plot if the plants must be spaced 12 inches apart?), literature (Who wrote "A rose is a rose is a rose. ..."?), geography (Where is the world's oldest known tree?) and history (What spices were once traded between Asia and Europe?)
At Morningside Elementary school, on Fort Worth's east side, children as young as pre-kindergarten are learning the difference between an annual and a perennial from school horticulturist Jerry Mitchell. And older students, who participate in the Texas A&M Extension Service's Junior Master Gardener program, are propagating ferns and coleus for the school's annual plant sale in May.
In March, each class had cultivated a 9-foot-by-3-foot garden of cool-weather spring vegetables ready to be harvested: broccoli, cabbage, onion, potatoes. But surrounding this row of no-nonsense plots is a lush landscape of Mitchell and his students' creation: climbing roses, water-conservation gardens, rock gardens, tropical plants, a rushing waterfall surrounded by perennials and wetlands gardens.
In the garden, "you learn seasons, you learn weather," Mitchell explains. "Vocabulary is everywhere." The smallest children love to simply fill pots with soil, he says, noting that 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds require "quick and to-the-point explanations; don't get into too many details."
Mid-April, Mitchell notes, is the time to start warm-weather vegetable seeds such as okra, summer squash, corn and cucumbers. And you can still put tomato plants in the ground, says Samudio.
For little kids, she likes snap peas, which are easy to grow and fun to eat right off the plant; and fennel, which attracts the larvae of the black swallowtail butterfly. In one corner of the garden children can track the complete metamorphosis of this striking green and black caterpillar.
Lest you feel overwhelmed, the plant experts stress that "gardening" doesn't have to mean a major backyard project. A container garden requires only a pot and some soil, and easy year-round indoor activities abound, such as growing rye grass in an old nylon stocking.
Don't be dissuaded by your young child's short attention span. "Always be positive," Mitchell advises. "You just have to keep on smiling and [generate] a constant dialogue. You never know what some little kid is picking up."
Pay dirt
It appears, for a few weekends, that the only things Max is picking up are earthworms, which he unceremoniously "divides" in two ("It doesn't hurt them, Mom!" he assures me.) Even the first sunflower seedlings, poking through the mulch, hold his attention only momentarily. The basketball hoop beckons.
But then, a breakthrough.
On a late-March walk through the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, Max stops suddenly in front of a perennial bed populated by two dozen newly emerging cannas.
"Look, Mom!" he says excitedly. "We have those in our garden!"
Our garden.
I like the sound of that.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM
Some of the credit for the boom in schoolyard gardens can be attributed to the Junior Master Gardener course, an international program created in 1998 by the Texas A&M Extension Service. An offshoot of the venerable Master Gardener program, JMG functions as a 4-H program for children in grades 3 through 8. But it also offers bountiful classroom resources to teachers, which has made it a popular addition to curricula across the country.
"It fills a niche," says Randy Seagraves, Junior Master Gardener curriculum coordinator. Students and teachers alike enjoy working outside, and kids who learn better through hands-on assignments participate more, says Seagraves. To become certified, children must complete service projects in their community.
"They may find out that they enjoy it," he adds, "and establish a lifelong habit of giving service."
Last year, independent researchers uncovered a correlation between JMG and higher science achievement-test scores. Texas A&M's own studies have found that JMG can improve students' self-esteem and nutritional behaviors. JMG kids develop better decision-making skills and are more likely to communicate what they've learned with others.
"[You ask a child] 'What did you do today?' and often the response is 'Nothing,'" says Seagraves. "But not with these kids. They want to share." Information: www.jmgkids.us
— Liz Stevens
AGE-APPROPRIATE GARDENING
0 to 4 years Goal: Make the outdoors part of your child's everyday experience. Point out flowers, trees, birds, bugs and the change of seasons. Project(s): Sow bean seeds in a clear glass jar of filled with moist soil; press them against the edge of the jar so you and your child can watch them germinate over time. Grow rye grass in a cup. Plant some sunflower seeds outdoors in a sunny spot. Book: Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
5 to 6 years Goal: Facilitate hands-on outdoor exploration of plants and soil with children. Let them get dirty! Introduce the relationship between what we eat and where it comes from: i.e., food doesn't magically appear on grocery-store shelves. Project: Create a small vegetable and/or flower garden, allowing children to take ownership by helping to choose and bed plants/seeds; narrow the selection to include easy-to-grow radishes, cucumbers, lettuces, herbs, snap beans and edible nasturtiums. Make your own scarecrow. Bonus: Children are far more likely to eat vegetables that they grow themselves. Books: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan
7 to 8 years Goal: Encourage children to garden more independently and introduce more complex — but still very basic — concepts such as photosynthesis, habitats, soil nutrients, harmful and beneficial insects. Project: Give a child her own garden plot and the tools she needs to work them. Determine the soil type and appropriate amendments, and what kinds of plants would grow best in the chosen spot. Release ladybugs and track them. Grow fennel and follow the metamorphosis of the larvae of the swallowtail butterflies that lay their eggs on the plant. Keep a garden journal. Books: Cucumber Soup by Vickie Leigh Krudwig, The Rose in My Garden by Arnold Lobel
9 to 10 years Goal: Encourage children to take what they've learned in their gardens and view it through a global lens. Explore the environmental effects — good and bad — of humans on the planet and how your child can continue to be a responsible steward of the Earth. Project: Create compost by "recycling" vegetable and fruit scraps and adding leaves and other "brown" materials. Book: Nature's Art Box: From T-shirts to Twig Baskets, 65 Cool Projects for Crafty Kids To Make With Natural Materials You Can Find Anywhere by Laura Martin
11 and up Goal: Have a positive effect on your community. Project: Start a Junior Master Gardener program with a group of kids or a neighborhood garden club. Plant a community garden and donate the harvest to a food bank or shelter. Books: My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
SOURCES: Gail Manning, Jerry Mitchell, Elizabeth Samudio, Dotty Woodson, kidsgardening.org, and the Colorado State University and Texas A&M cooperative extension services'
Web sites: www.ext.colostate.edu and aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/kindergarden. |
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
The healing path
— JESSIE MILLIGAN STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
The word from her doctor came while she and her husband were on vacation in the Pacific Northwest three years ago. She had an inoperable malignant tumor. The couple stopped at the vast daffodil fields of the Skagit Valley north of Seattle.
They walked, absorbing the news and the views of the yellow daffodils.
"Yellow is the color of healing," Elizabeth Anna Samudio, then 42, said. She spread out her arms wide and said: "I am healed."
Her healing would take longer, of course, but immersing herself in natural beauty was something she considered an important part of her path back to health.
Back home in Fort Worth, the garden at her South Hills home became all the more important after the bad news.
A lifetime gardener, Samudio always had thought of her garden as a healing place. In the ensuing years after diagnosis, Samudio would become an expert on healing gardens and now teaches classes and speaks on how gardens can help us recover.
"A healing garden should be reachable, knowable, touchable," she says.
Between sessions of chemotherapy and radiation, Samudio retreated to her front yard to soak in the birdsong, the heady scents of herbs and flowers, and the beauty of the lilies she had planted.
When she and her husband, James, moved into the house in 1997, they put a small vegetable and flower garden in the front yard of their ranch-style home.
The back yard was too full of pets and kids to allow for gardening. So they dug up a patch of lawn in the front. More lawn disappeared as the garden evolved. She started calling her yard a healing garden after her diagnosis.
"A healing garden is something that always is in progress. You have to work with nature," she says. "If you are working like a fiend, that's not healing."
She planted perennials. Sedum, silver mound artemisia, Blackfoot daisy, lavender, mealy blue sage, all in the sun.
"I think it is important to plant things that come back," she says. She likes the anticipation, the knowing that things can change.
She also uses annuals. In the shade, she's created a palette of whites and greens with impatiens and caladium.
"I like the white. It's cooling and calming," she says.
She planted crinum lilies because they remind her of swans. "Beauty is healing," she says. Her garden is a swirl of plants, none of them laid out in straight lines. It's also a mix of plants.
"Part of a healing garden is that you can eat it," Samudio says as she walks through her garden. The flowers are interplanted with peppers, tomatoes, basil, rosemary and marjoram.
Her garden is all organic and features low-water-use plants. A garden should have a random design and be allowed to fill in gradually, she says. It should be gently tended and allowed to take its time. That's the way of nature, she says. She felt her cervical cancer was also a random event that needed time and tending.
She wanted not just to look at her garden but wander around it, lie down in it, spend time.
A path was laid from her driveway to the porch to welcome her home. More paths meandered through the beds of flowers.
"Where I find myself walking, I make paths," she says. Her garden also has whimsical touches. A birdhouse is shaped like a teapot, and beneath it sit two china tea cups.
After months of treatments Samudio heard good news on her husband's 50th birthday in 2003. She was cancer-free and she's stayed that way.
The couple put in a four-tier fountain in their front yard. They designed it and had workers from their organic landscape design and installation business, Elizabeth Anna's Old World Garden on Eighth Avenue, help install it.
"It's the victory fountain," James Samudio says. They'd long called their front yard a victory garden after an elderly neighbor reminded them of the front-yard gardens that had been popular during World War II. Samudio describes her garden as having an energy that she believes stimulates the immune system.
Now Samudio teaches a class on healing gardens twice a year through Texas Christian University's Extended Education program. She speaks to cancer groups. People call her wanting to instantly put in healing gardens. There is no instant healing. "I tell them it is not just an installation. It's a process. It needs to evolve."
A few elements of a healing garden
Aroma — Include plants with fragrance. Rose, lavender and most herbs are popular.
Color — White, blue, pink and lavender are calming. So is green foliage. Red and yellows are lively.
Memories — Put in plants that remind you of a pleasant person or a place.
Nourishment — Include edible herbs and vegetables interspersed with flowers.
Gradual development — Let the garden follow a natural process and take shape over time.
Make it beautiful — Planting
favorite blooms and including art makes the garden inviting.
The Samudios live in the South Hills area of Fort Worth.
A lily of the Nile blooms in the garden.
Samudio says white flowers have "cooling and calming" properties.
Elizabeth Samudio describes her garden's healing qualities as an "energy." She speaks to area cancer groups about gardening.
A statue of St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners, stands in Elizabeth Samudio's "healing garden."
Elizabeth Anna Samudio and her husband, James, installed a "victory fountain" after learning that she was cancer-free.
Samudio takes a moment to smell some marjoram growing in her garden.
Jessie Milligan 817-390-7738
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