LESSONS FROM THE PAST

More than a century ago, Nature Study advocates sought to connect schoolchildren with the science of landscapes and gardens

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HAVE YOU EVER SHARED your love of gardens and gardening with children, your own or someone else's? It can be as simple as showing a three-year-old how to make a snapdragon flower open and close its "mouth" or as involved as working with a thirdgrade class to plant a three-sisters garden (corn, pumpkins and beans, organized as Native Americans traditionally did, with beans vining up cornstalks and pumpkins spreading below to shade the soil).

Whatever the gardening wonders or techniques being shared, the impulse is often the same: the belief that children benefit from direct learning in the natural world. A garden offers a great place to do that.

While that belief has inspired much informal sharing about plants, it also undergirds a long tradition in the field of formal education. One such initiative, which enjoyed unusual longevity and reach, was the Nature Study Movement. Active in the United States from about 1890 to 1930, Nature Study proponents emphasized outdoor experiences and direct observations of plants, animals and natural phenomena, such as cloud forms and weather patterns.

NATURE STUDY: WHY AND HOW

Nature Study was designed as one way to reform elementary public education in the US. Those reform efforts advanced progressive ideas, such as every child deserves an education that includes fluency with local natural history and hands-on science.