Helping children develop gardening skills can benefit them now and in the future. Lara Cowan, founder of Botanic Shed, shares why.
By Lara Cowan
I wonder if we asked one million adults across rural areas all over the world about their fondest childhood moments, how many would come back with a memory of being in a garden, outdoors in a field, or in the woods?
Children need gardening for the good of their souls and to give them a feeling of comfort in the world almost as much as they need parental figures and human love. Being in the garden gives you a sense of being at home in the world. And that provides us with a sense of belonging and stability in our childhood right through to adulthood that we yearn for and need to flourish cognitively and socially.
Being in the garden gives you a sense of being at home in the world.
Lara
Gardening, gives children access to people who value nature, people they might not have otherwise spent quality time with indoors. Essentially it gives them time with adults who are fully focused and present. This can offer children the type of attention needed for spiritual and cognitive growth that so often is lacking with day-to-day adult and child interactions as the phone screen dominates.
Sowing seeds, watching roots grow, and seeing robins dig for worms gives children a visual map displaying the unity of life. It widens horizons on the child's inner landscape ameliorating both their emotional and physical health. It mirrors this effect on the outer landscape, where relationships with the self and others are established on holistic terms and hopefully enjoyed throughout their lives.
A child watering the garden. Image credit - Trav Wade, Unsplash
A very simple equation and critical these days more than ever, is that children need gardening because gardening can give them outdoor exercise and a desire to bring natural foods into their diet. Children also need the microbes, phytonicides, and negative ions that interaction with plants and soil gives their bodies. Introducing children to these vital atmospheric gems enlivens health-positive functions in their biological systems, for example by stimulating and regulating dopamine and serotonin productions, regulating blood sugar levels, and a host of biological reactions that rely on contact with the natural world to increase a child's capacity to thrive and grow.
The strengthening of the microbiome in the gut intestine has been proven to be key to our ability to avoid and recover from diseases (a good read here is Super Gut by Dr. William Davies).
Exposure to exercise, diet, and the natural world builds a home environment that is a strong body and an adaptive resilient cognitive processing system - something we all need as a basic starting point if we are to live a fulfilling, long, and happy life.
Helping children to become gardeners, and growers, to learn how to make a hundred plants from one plant through cuttings or seed sowing is a gift that will one day possibly save their life. It is a practice that brings hope, purpose, and real-life nourishment to the soul and to the home.
Developing gardening skills gives children a chance to understand nature, to respect all natural living cells, plants, and insects.
Lara
Developing gardening skills gives children a chance to understand nature, to respect all natural living cells, plants, and insects, and to become people who make sustainable life choices. They will hopefully, by using their inner compass and with knowledge of the ever more treacherous state of nature, become climate-conscious, nature advocates. They may give the natural world another chance to rebalance in favour of the laws of nature, rather than those of the human invention that has so recklessly put us in peril.
International bestseller Richard Louv wrote a wonderful book called Vitamin N and on his website writes a piece under a similar title 'Ten Reasons Why Children and Adults Need Vitamin N' I would recommend readers interested in this topic to have a look into his work.
Lara Cowan
Lara has gardened since the age of three when her family moved from London to an Old Farm House in Oxfordshire. She studied horticulture with the RHS in 2010 and worked for landscape designers in her free time in the summers. In 2015 Lara set up Botanic Shed as a blog. She and her daughter went on to set it up as a business in 2021.
Botanic Shed is a community of gardeners and healers who renovate gardens and run nature-inspired events that focus on nature as a balm for the soul and society.
The Botanic Shed and its School of Nature exist to help people prescribe themselves meaningful doses of nature connection.
For founder Lara, nature is a powerful medicine. While healing from personal traumas, she discovered a deep need for connection with the natural world and turned that passion into a business dedicated to providing gardening and nature-based experiences, particularly for women. Lara has shared her expertise on BBC Gardeners’ World Podcast, discussing nature and neurodivergence, and hosted a series on BBC Radio Oxford.
Related content
Lara's story – neurodiversity and nature
For Lara, nature has been an ally to support neurodiversity and accompanying symptoms. She shares her story and the supportive space she has created for others.
