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Essayist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune considers children's gardens.
CLARENCE PAGE: A schoolyard on Capitol Hill. Here, near the place where Congress meets, you can see two sides of city life. Look closely here in Watkins Elementary School, and you might seen signs of death, trash, and decay. Yet, within this drama of urban life there's the urban paradox, the city garden.
CHILD: These have really grown.
SPOKESPERSON: They have really grown.
CLARENCE PAGE: Here at Watkins School manicured patches of flowers and trees welcome the city dweller to return, however briefly, to the peaceful, comforting, enriching garden. Green thumbs for city kids? Watkins School is getting pretty good at it, helped along by a PTA parent, Molly Dannenmaier, who wrote this book, "A Child's Garden, A Guide and a Journey to Natural Spaces for Kids and Parents."
SPOKESPERSON: Can you rub the leaves and then smell that leaf? Rub it hard. What does it smell like?
CLARENCE PAGE: So far the Capitol Hill kids have brought new life to the asphalt jungle, new flowers, new herbs, a new haven for butterflies. Their plans are even more ambitious-meadows, hills, creeks, jungle gardens, and shady woods, all of it helped along by gifts and donations, including a $50,000 boost from the Department of Agriculture. Children who garden learn a lot of things more quickly than children who don't. According to several studies that Dannenmaier cites, natural settings can diminish stress, increase mental sharpness, and accelerate physical healing.
But true gardeners know the gifts only begin there. The poet Dorothy Frances Gurney might have had Adam and Eve in mind when she wrote "One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth." Gardening fell out of favor as modern industry came into favor. Too much work, city dwellers said, and Mother Nature's garden began to compete with new crops of concrete and steel. Cities paid tribute to the garden with lovely parks and homes. Chicago's city slogan "Urbs in Horto" means city in the garden in Latin, although some locals say the slogan really should be "Ubi est Mea," "Where is mine?". Where, indeed? It is no coincidence that civilization as it loses contact with nature also loses some of its civility. That's old news in the cities and new news in the country. Urban crime, for example, has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years. Today's big stories of kids killing kids are to be found in the small towns of suburbia and rural America, like Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Tennessee; and Springfield, Oregon. Is it only coincidence? Or has the simple life in rural America also changed, become less natural and, therefore, less civilized? It is easy, perhaps too easy, to blame the abundance of guns.
Americans do have more guns per person than any other country on the planet, but rural youths have always had guns without turning on each other. Maybe something else is happening here. Visit rural America today and what do you see? A vast, robust urbanization is moving in on the cornfields. America loses about 3,000 acres of farmland every day, a million acres a year to develop ribbons of concrete, expressways, strip malls, multiplex movie theaters, Wal-marts, fast food. Dotting the rural landscape are satellite dishes, bringing MTV, ESPN, and Jerry Springer to the placid rural landscape. Modernization threatens the social glue of small town life. It pulls relentlessly at those who are the most vulnerable, like early teenagers, already trying to make sense of life's most confusing and emotional and vulnerable stage. Perhaps then these city kids are rediscovering something country kids have long taken for granted.
SPOKESPERSON: And you know what really likes these flowers?
CHILD: Bees?
SPOKESPERSON: Yes. Something else.
CHILD: Butterflies!
SPOKESPERSON: Yes, butterflies.
CLARENCE PAGE: Maybe Crosby, Stills, & Nash had it right. We've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
I'm Clarence Page.
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