THE SMALLEST FOOTPRINT
by Robin Wheeler, Owner, Edible Landscapes

Jenutza, the clairvoyant counselor sat across from me and completed her psychic reading. I had been scrambling with my notes to keep up with the rapid fire, almost disconnected ideas that tumbled out as she channeled messages about my garden. Water problems. Grow tea plants. Plant women’s herbs. Teepees. Women with drums … those would be coming. And children. She saw children coming to the garden.

Children? Yikes. The garden was designed with raised beds and clear paths so that visiting kids and dogs could easily see what their choices are, and they have been very responsible. (Adult humans, on the other hand, have been hard to train). But I normally had to cover my eyes during kiddy visits as I waited for innocent feet to stamp on my precious Marc Warshaw’s or to snap the new growth off the Tropoleum tuberosum.

But they never did. And a few months after my reading, a friend phoned and asked if I would teach her daughter about botany. And then more girls came. And then another friend phoned about her small son, and I started another class, and then some dads showed up with their boys. And darn it, I was having some fun.

I thought kids would get bored in the garden, but they don’t. We taste and sniff just about everything we can reach. We dig up tubers with shovels and fingers and smell them and taste them raw. We slice up cabbages to look at the folded design inside, and the kids fight over who gets to tear at the raw leaves and stuff them down their throats as if they’ve never seen anything so desirable as a dirty, slug marked, moldy cabbage in January.

I thought the little ones would hurt my plants, and they don’t. Our first lesson was how to hold a stem gently, to thank the plant, and then pinch off a sample leaf or fruit, and they are pretty careful. They have favorite plants now that they visit, to fluff their hands through and to taste and sniff.

We pour hot water over Oregon grape roots to make dye. We make dye out of hop pollen and berries and brush it onto paper. We look at flowers to see whether it is flies or bees or butterflies feeding there. We dig up roots and look at the different kinds, the big tubers or the fluffy, hairy ones, and sometimes the kids are surprised to see food hanging off the bottom. So we wipe the soil off and stand in the morning dew and nibble on parsnips and Dutch Mice and bunium tubers. And then we collect herbs and go inside and make tea. Most of my six year old students can select a good tea from the garden.

My older class gets the same treatment, but we up the ante a bit. Dave visited one day with his still, and we filled it with rosemary and made oil and hydrosol. We make salves and gift teas. We look at seeds and realize that wheat and rice seed look like other grass seeds, and that wild peas and garden peas have the same flowers and leaves, and that if we would just look, we would realize that cleavers and baby’s breath and woodruff are related. That is how we are learning about plant families. We are learning how Latin will tell us something about the plant. We can tell where to look in books to get information we need. We do "experiments" that fail and sometimes we even take the time to wonder why they failed. Then we dive back outside and do something new.

Sometimes we work hard and dig new gardens, but we usually loiter over some new wonder. Sometimes we just look down and see what we’re standing on, and learn which are medicinal and which are for salads and which are for the other creatures, as well.

We tape leaves and flowers into books, but we don’t have tests. If we don’t remember something, we go back outside and do it all again.

Jenutza was right. Kids are coming to the garden. They are happy and loving with plants, and never tread on my Tropaeolum tuberosum.

It’s tough work, teaching kids botany, but thank goodness, someone has to do it.

Proven Plants for Kids
Good for nibbling or for making tea
Chives (they like the blossoms)
Fennel
Lemon balm
Lemon verbena
Monarda
Orange day lily flowers
Oregano (hot!)
Peppermint
Red mustard (the wasabi plant!)
Rosemary
Sorrel
Spearmint
Strawberries
Sweet Cicely (licorice-like leaves and green seeds)
Violets

Robin Wheeler is the owner of Edible Landscaping and author of the Gardening Book Gardening for the Faint of Heart, and munches the odd bit of violet, miner’s lettuce and corn salad on the way to her compost bin.