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 ello fellow Earthlings and welcome to the garden.
In our ongoing attempt to bring nature back into your gardens,
we have not really touched on one of the most important reasons:
why natural, organic gardening is so smart. Our children and
the children of our communities, regardless of their socioeconomic
background, really deserve to know as much as we can teach them
about how nature works. The obvious classroom for this knowledge
is the garden. Let's take a walk and discuss some of the ways
we can increase awareness of the natural world for our kids.
 As our
society continues to sprawl into the open spaces that once surrounded
our communities, we are continuing to lose precious native areas
that once allowed us to take our families on hiking trips or
picnics. These spaces continue to shrink and our choices for
immersing our children's inherent curiosity in a natural place
are getting fewer by the week. This is where the home garden,
parks, or community/botanical gardens come in very handy.
Consider
the amazing questions your children will ask you while they ponder
the relationship between the soil and a plant or why certain
bugs eat plants while other bugs eat them. This is something
that we gardeners' can teach without having to resort to long
trips that are excruciatingly boring to kids. There is a classroom
right outside the back door. Just the opportunities to increase
the vocabulary of our children to include such words as environment,
or to give them an opportunity to make their own sense out of
how things in nature work, is definitely worth the minimal investment
of time on our parts.
Last year,
I made my annual pilgrimage to the flower fields in Carlsbad
to admire the beauty of the colors and to see what new evolution
this wonderful place had made. I was enthralled by the myriad
of questions being lobbed at a teacher who had taken her third
or fourth grade class on a field trip. The children were more
interested in how the plants grew than they were about the obvious
eye candy the flowers provide.
I grew
up with these fields and the gladiolus fields that are now becoming
homes closer to the coast highway. I never tired of considering
all of the possible ways these plants grew. I used to come up
with some very creative theories and often shared them with my
grandfather who was a local tomato farmer. I remember asking
him one sunny day if the stuff they were spaying on the plants
was suntan oil so the plants could receive more sun power. After
busting out laughing (of course, I was hurt), he took the time
to tell me about insects that ate the plants and that the stuff
they were spraying was a poison for the insects. My next question,
of course, was why the good bugs he had told me about weren't
eating all of the bad ones. He thought for a moment and said
that was a good question.
I was lucky
enough to have a farmer in my family, and my grandfather was
an oracle of wisdom. He used conventional methods of farming,
but helped me grow my gardens without chemicals. Constant exposure
to agricultural chemicals (including DDT) took his life way too
soon, but his wisdom remains with me today.
No one
has to be an expert biologist or horticulturist to give their
children insights on how nature works. In the end, kids will
make their own conclusions on how things "really" work.
Nature excites their imaginations and feeds their tireless hunger
for knowledge. It also gets them out from in front of the bloody
Nintendo machine. They get an opportunity to breathe in nature,
just watch them grow.
When my
nephew Brandon was very young, he used to be fascinated by snails.
He could watch them for hours. It reminded me of my interest
in ant behavior in the vacant lot by my house when I was much
younger (before imported fire ants). Brandon showed all of the
signs of a born scientist; his curiosity and attention to detail
was astounding. He shared his theories about snails and his insights
were both hilarious and astute. It was very entertaining.
My friends
and the publishers of my books just moved to a larger lot so
they could encourage this kind of growth in their newborn daughter,
Ava Francis. While more land may not be possible for many, there
are an abundance of local places where a child's exposure to
nature can take place. My favorite places are botanical gardens
and regional parklands.
In closing
this column, I would like you to encourage your children to get
involved in the home garden, as well as giving them opportunities
to experience away from the home. They will bloom like the flowers
that you let them grow and pick. It only makes sense to familiarize
them with what is the only planet they will get to live on.
Next time
we will be discussing the purpose of feeding your lawns, some
commentary on the hype being purveyed by some of the chemical
fertilizer companies on this topic, and the impact lawn foods
have on our waterways and beaches. See you in the Garden! 
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mill.net Don Trotter's Natural Gardening columns appear nationally in environmentally sensitive publications. Look for Don's books Natural Gardening A-Z on sale now
and The Complete Natural Gardener just arriving now from
Hay House at bookstores everywhere and at all online booksellers.
Check out Don's columns in Hearst's Healthy Living Magazine,
coming in the March 2000 issue.