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No Child Left
Inside
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“Last Child in the Woods” is
the title of a recent best-selling book by
journalist Richard Louv. More from a journalistic
perspective than a scholarly one, the book reports
on growing concerns among many educators, child
psychologists, and child development researchers
that many of the “new” childhood disorders may be
related to a recent dramatic decline in the amount
of free time children are allowed to spend in and
around natural settings. In the book he coins the
phrase “nature deficit disorder” to describe an
assortment of developmental problems, from obesity
to attention deficit disorder, that appear to
strongly correlate to children not having the
opportunity to freely interact with natural
environments.
This past winter the Nebraska
Statewide Arboretum cosponsored a presentation by
Richard Louv at the Lied Center in Lincoln. The
presentation drew a crowd of more than 2000—mostly
teachers, child care workers, and child advocates.
The large crowd was an indication of the degree to
which the concerns raised in the book are resonating
among those who work with children on a daily
basis. By the way, Wyobraska is not immune to the
problems described in the book—by all accounts;
childhood obesity is growing fastest in rural
communities.
A well-educated friend once
told me that an expert is someone who gets paid
large sums of money to tell people what is patently
obvious.
One way to make sure that the
children in your life get plenty of nature is to
encourage them to help you with your gardening and
landscaping activities. Young children especially,
are curious about everything. Encourage them to
explore your garden and landscape, and you may be
surprised at how eagerly they respond. Granted, you
may end up with a tomato plant or two uprooted or a
big black beetle walking across your family room
carpet, but ten or twenty years from now, will that
really matter.
Better yet, why not encourage
your children to have their very own garden. A few
years ago I proposed a few simple rules for parents
wanting to help their child start a garden. Here
they are: |
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Previous Articles
I
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
April 17
Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
2007 Articles
2006 Articles |
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1. Keep it small. Even a 2’ by 2’ or a 3’ by 3’
garden will seem large to a small child. A child’s
first few gardens should be just big enough for a
few carefully selected plants. The location should
be in the children's’ part of the yard, perhaps near
a swing set. It will help to define it clearly with
some edging or boards (don’t use any chemically
treated boards or timbers, though.
2. Make it a summer garden. Don’t start a
children’s garden until early summer, when
temperatures are consistently warm. Seeds will
germinate quickly, and I even suggest planting
bedding plants that are already blooming. Don’t
expect the interest to continue much after school
begins in the fall—too much other stuff going on by
then.
3. No adults allowed. It’s OK to show your child
a few of the basic gardening techniques, especially
if they ask you to. But then, let their garden be
their project. A properly disinterested parent
will likely be invited to a number of summer “garden
walks”, and for these special occasions, adults are
allowed.
4. Pick fun & easy plants.
It’s hard to go wrong with a simple selection of
some of the favorite flowers from your own childhood
garden—moss rose, snapdragons, petunias, sunflowers,
cosmos—try a mixture of easy to grow seeds and
bedding plants.
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5. Let nature happen. I suggest no chemical
pesticides or herbicides of any sort in a children’s
garden. A little fertilizer is just fine—so long as
the child is putting it on. Pulling a few weeds,
watching bees and butterflies stealing nectar from
the flowers, and roly-polys scurrying around in the
mulch are all part of the experience of a childhood
garden. Give that child a magnifying glass or a
microscope to see some of the smaller stuff that
lives in a garden and you just might end up with a
Nobel-prize winning microbiologist in the family.
6. Add a little water. A shallow container like a
saucer for a large flower pot would make an
excellent (and inexpensive) ground level bird bath
in a child’s garden. It would increase the
likelihood of bird, butterfly, and insect visits to
the garden.
7. Finally, anything grows. Try not to turn your
child’s garden into a competition or parental
life lesson. Remember, these rules are for the
parents, not the child. In the child’s garden there
are no rules for the child.
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