Count Down To Open

One week. That is all there is to the opening of the 11th season in the Hershey Children’s Garden. Are you looking forward to it? I know I am. Each year monthly themes are chosen upon which to base programs. We firmly believe in the power of play and story to impact a child’s development, so we are taking a literary approach this season. We are highlighting a different children’s story each month and incorporating it into our programs.

First of all, April is dedicated to earth care and cultivating a respect for all life. We want to demonstrate that our lives and actions are interconnected with the rest of life on earth. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss carries this message well. We wil bring the story to life through several programs.

BotaniCool^®School for Little Buds (ages 3-5 yrs) 
Saturdays, April 17 and May 15

Bring your little buds to the Garden and watch them bloom! In this series, children ages 3-5 will use the Garden to learn about caring for the Earth. Registration is available for individual sessions or the series. Please register in advance.

Plant a Truffula Tree            
Sundays, April 4, 11, 18 & 25
Saturdays, April 10, 17 & 24

Posted by Josh Steffen 

Celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day with nature crafts for children showcasing the importance of trees.

No registration required.

Date: Saturday and Sunday, April 24 & 25, 2010; 1:00-4:00pm

Fall Little Buds Unfolds Next Week

Kids this fall can go on a little trip, a trip with many twists and turns . This trip starts in darkness and ends in darkness, from soil to stomach! Why, it’s journey of their lunch! The Garden will offer a new program, "The Journey of Your Lunch," a new series of "Little Buds" classes about how and where their food originates.  

"Little Buds" is a popular program series offering families with children between the ages of 3 and 5 the opportunity to engage the Garden on many different topics such as habitats, insects and plant parts and cycles. Children learn developmentally important concepts through art, dance, stories and hands-on exploration. Come explore the farm in September, how food is processed in October, and the kitchen in November.

Do you have a vegetable garden? Is this your first year with one? The National Gardening Association expects a 19% increase in the number of edible gardens installed in the US this year. The economy is one of the driving forces behind this uptick. When the going gets tough, the tough get gardening! I personally grew up with a huge vegetable garden full of peppers, tomatoes, rhubarb (ew), and lots of weeds. My job was to remove said weeds. I think this task scarred me – thanks Dad  – because of the HUGE spiders I always encountered. I was little and I think the spiders were car-sized. I still completely lose it when I see one. But let’s move on; I’ve digressed and I’m freaking myself out. Why all the vegetable gardens? Why are we composting, shopping at the ever-increasing number of farmer’s markets, and starting plants from seed – from seed! Why does it matter? Does it even matter? If you ask Will Allen – founder and CEO of Growing Power in Milwaukee – it does matter, and it’s a matter of life and death. He became alarmed at the increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, particularly in low-income families with limited or no access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The closest place to shop for these families may be a convenience store a mile away with over-salted, over-sugared, over-processed “food." Growing Power was founded to bring fresh greens, fruits, and veggies to inner-city dwellers and now provides them to over 10,000 people a year. 

Will Allen, who was just featured in a major article in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday, is coming to Cleveland. He is the keynote speaker at the American Horticultural Society’s National Children & Youth Garden Symposium, hosted by Cleveland Botanical Garden. I am SO excited to meet him; I’m starting to lose sleep. We are taking him to several of our Learning Gardens to see our urban farms, meet Green Corps staff, and most importantly, meet some of the students we employ to work these acres. I’m not sure our teens realize who it is they are meeting in just 2 weeks, or the impact he has had in Milwaukee and many other cities. But I think Mr. Allen will be impressed with what he sees happening at our Learning Gardens. Yes, we have some weeds – I’m not going to pull them, Dad –however, I think he will enjoy experiencing the “fruits” of their labors this summer.

Affiliate Garden Club Containers Are Back

Something to think about as the gardening season approaches:

Every year, Hershey Children’s Garden visitors enjoy a creative partnership between our staff and the Garden’s Affiliate Garden Clubs. The Affiliates, a network of area garden clubs, have a rich and varied history with the Garden that includes programming, hosting speakers, and even mounting exhibits and shows. 2009 marks the fourth season of a fun Affiliate collaboration in Hershey Children’s Garden – one that brings whimsical scarecrows in the fall and vibrant containers in the summer that add an extra layer of enchantment for visitors young and old.

Garden staff supplies the containers, soil, site for each pot and twelve creative themes. Affiliates supply the creative arrangement of plant material. The final effect is a garden bursting with fun, amusing, colorful vignettes. Some of this season’s themes include "Stinky Gardens," "Stripy Gardens," "Furry Gardens," "Jurassic Gardens," and "Pink Gardens."

With stimulating designs like these, there is bound to be summer-long enjoyment. Our Affiliates are busy dreaming up their whimsical plantings for this season. They’re not just for kids, and plan on checking them out in a couple of months.

The First Bloomed Greeting

Hershey Children’s Garden opens in less than two weeks! What greetings can you expect on your first visit? Some visitors expect luscious blooms to pop out of the ground in April! I am not kidding you. I remember one parent commenting "is this it" upon their first visit seeing such a bare space. We are "professionals" working in a botanical garden, but sad to say that does not mean we can defy the laws of nature.

What you will see over the next two months is a slow steady re-awakening to the garden. Fairly soon visitors can expect a blast of diverse varieties of daffodils, followed by tulips. Even now as I write crocus, Dutch Hybrid iris and Winter Jasmine are beginning to put on a bloom show. Come see early spring in Hershey Children’s Garden. There is not a week to miss.
   

Conclusion: Simplicity Itself

I have written a series of blog reflections on David Sobel’s book Childhood and Nature over the past couple of months. It has been fun connecting Sobel’s eight design principles to Hershey Children’s Garden design and activities. Sobel writes in such an engaging way, using great illustrations from his own experience to highlight a principle. . .even if not everyone can relate to romping around some island off the coast of New England with a bunch of kids.

I want to make one final point or observation from my own experience to parents and environmental educators alike. I tend to make what I do unnecessarily complex. What makes Hershey Children’s Garden so successful is simplicity itself. We adults can make children’s garden designs and programming too complex. I thought I had to come up with new and exciting designs and programs every single year. I created unnecessary work for myself. I learned differently.

My work is one of balance. On the one hand, I have discovered that kids love repetition and simplicity. On the other hand, however, there needs to be enough change to keep parents interested year after year. If you are a parent, seeking to garden with the kids, planting the same crops or doing the same craft over and over is not a bad thing. Repetition allows kids to develop mastery and confidence in a skill or space. I do recommend some variation to keep you engaged though. If you find this balance, step back and watch the magic flow.

Principle Seven: Hunting and Gathering

This is the last in a series of posts applying the design concepts David Sobel outlines in his book, Childhood and Nature, to what we do in Hershey Children’s Garden. This is important reading not only if you are designing a garden space, program or activity, but also for environmental educators and parents alike.

Hide-and-Seek and Where’s Waldo are successful games for a reason. We seem to still possess something deep in our pysche to hunt down and collect things. We see our Holy Grails as it were. I found it interesting as Sobel notes in his section dedicated to the principle of hunting and gathering that many of famous naturalists and environmentalists (i.e. E.O. Wilson or John Muir) were enthusiastic hunters as children. Their fascination with all things living developed into a friendship and sense of responsibility to what they hunted or collected. Is this attitude not at the heart of what Hershey Children’s Garden is all about?

One of the first tools I learned to use as a children’s garden manager was the scavenger hunt. I tried all kinds of activities with various levels of success, but I had a home run every time I sent kids looking. I frequently find piles of various plant parts all over the garden, piles of fruit, leaves and flowers. We utilize hunter/gather instincts in many different ways within the garden. We keep a collection of scavenger hunts, refreshed monthly, for children to do. Also, we put a solve-it-yourself mystery trail around the garden loosely patterned after Blues Clues. Children solve the Garden Mystery question (i.e. what does a plant need to grow, from where does your lunch come?) when they assemble three to five separate clues discovered in solving different puzzles around the garden. Perhaps one of the best ways I have discovered for engaging a kid who was not otherwise engaged with the space was to challenge them to find some plant that I describe to them. How do I get them to do this? I simply ask if they want to play a game or I ask if they think they are so smart. It works. . .most of the time.

Principle Six: Small Worlds

I am currently writing a series of post, applying the design concepts David Sobel outlines in his book "Childhood and Nature" to what we do in Hershey Children’s Garden. This is important reading not only if you are designing a garden space, program or activity, but also for environmental educators and parents alike.

Children and adults alike seem naturally drawn to doll houses, model train sets or sand boxes, to worlds in miniature. "Through creating miniature representations of ecosystems or neighborhoods, we help children conceptually grasp the big picture. . .a concrete vehicle for understanding abstract ideas," writes Sobel. Small worlds are simplified, more accessible as all the parts are there in one snap shot.

There are numerous small worlds through out Hershey Children’s Garden. Again, scale is the critical design principle here. Try to convey the concept of habitats in general or wetland systems specifically to a four year old. We do walking through the small prairie, woodland or when dipping fingers in the pond. Food, shelter, water and a place to raise young are all right there in one view.

Parents and teachers can create similar experiences by planting a butterfly garden or building miniature versions of various habitat types using natural materials for example. Actually, just give a child a large cardboard box and room to themselves and whole worlds will unfold before one’s eyes.

 Prinicple Five: Special Places

I am currently writing a series of posts applying the design concepts David Sobel outlines in his book, "Childhood and Nature," to what we do in Hershey Children’s Garden. This is important reading not only if you are designing a garden space, program or activity, but also for environmental educators and parents alike.

"Almost everyone remembers a fort, den, tree house, or hidden corner in the back of a closet," writes Sobel. "Especially between ages eight and eleven, children like to find and create places where they can hide away and retreat into their own found or constructed spaces."  Almost any one I talk to speaks of Hershey Children’s Garden as a "special place" for their children. Why? The answer is simple: right ingredients. Children naturally like to build and occupy spaces of their own. With the right factors aligned, watch the spontaneous secret hide away appear.

The Children’s Garden consists of a series of pre-constructed "special places" like the rock wall cave, tree house, maze, giant reed grass bed and our little house on the prairie, to name a few. These spaces are at the right scale for children to feel comfortable and to own, but scale is not the only factor to consider. I have also seen children create an impromptu fort out of a couple of shrubs. Encouraging students to build their own special places in the school yard or classroom where they can carry on some creative work enhances curriculum.   

So what factors does Sobel note, and are found, in Hershey Garden?

• Right age group (ages 8 to 11)
• Lots of flotsam and jetsam or "loose parts" or small things for them to use to build or transform their imaginative world (think flowers, sticks, berries, cones, etc.)
• Open-minded adults who encourage the creation of special places (Parents or teachers hint, hint)

That’s it! It is that simple. If you are still not sure how to get started, come here and well show you how.

Posted by Josh Steffen

No Child Left Stuck Inside

 

Cleveland Botanical Garden continues to fill the gap. It was this concern for children that initiated the installation of Hershey Children’s Garden, and now, as the Garden enters its 10^th season, Cleveland Botanical Garden continues to strengthen its commitments to children with new Little Bud programs. Staff created a new set of Little Bud classes for two to five year olds due to the popularity of this engaging opportunity for parents and their children to have natural moments in the garden. Staff model great ways to interact with young children in the garden, offering both structured and unstructured play-time. Children learn their colors, letters, numbers and other important age-appropriate concepts without even knowing it. These moments can be had on March 21, April 18 and May 16 from 10:30 to 12:00 p.m. See our webite to register.

Posted by Josh Steffen