10/04/2026
SUNDAYS WITH SUE: Learning about life should start in a garden and who brings life to a garden better than a child? Watching a child explore and learn about nature suddenly gives more dimension and meaning to having a garden. With outdoor education, all the basics that are taught in a classroom can be translated and understood so clearly in a garden setting, a place in which children are already so enraptured.
Children can learn through native plantings how indigenous peoples used the plants for food, medicine, shelter, and daily living. When children physically help create a simple model village of plants, animals, and living quarters, it can place them in that time in history. Learning a couple of indigenous words like welcome and thank you helps children relate to the past.
Through our food plants, history is alive with crops that sustained our ancestors and still sustain humans over the course of a year. Toys, games, practical methods and implements for cooking, gardening, hunting, playing, and preserving are especially appreciated by children. Learning about the life of a seed, what it needs to grow, then planting one themselves can leave a lifelong impression on young minds.
The supporting ecosystems of insects and other wildlife are focused on in outdoor education. Reproductive parts of a flower and how pollen and nectar, transferred by pollinators, can support the propagation and spread of all plants are often eye opening concepts children and adults have not considered deeply. Being in an environment where a lizard, frog, bird, butterfly, or bee can scamper, fly, and flit by enhances the experience.
When children are reminded of their five senses (hear, touch, smell, taste, see) while examining plants and writing down their impressions, they become more aware of their surroundings. The realization that each plant has a purpose in nature, and some in our daily lives, creates ownership and protectiveness.
Through the composting and vermiculture (study of worms), children learn that rich soil depends on the death and decomposition of plants and the important role worms and other soil microbes play in that decomposition process. They see and touch the living soil of a worm bin, while learning about the anatomy and the movements of worms and other critters. Children are taught about how to build their own bin.
Ending a day where children write on ribbon banners what they are most grateful for has been a unifying effort at the Nokhnoma Teaching Garden. It gives children, teachers, parents, and garden volunteers a chance to reflect on the day the children were present. It also gives us the opportunity to see the value children place on a garden and their view of nature.
I write this in honor of Pat Decker, her team of volunteers, and all the teaching gardens throughout Sonoma County who value outdoor education. Come and see the garden at Nokhnoma and the Master Gardener volunteers from all of the teaching gardens at our Jamboree Oct. 11th 11am-2pm. Enjoy the day with your family while participating in activities.
To all of you who invite children and families into your gardens, you are golden. If you have not had a child visit your garden, invite one - you may discover something in your garden you may not have known before - through a child’s eyes. Have a great week!
“If children don’t grow up knowing about nature and appreciating it, they will not understand it. And if children don’t understand it, they won’t protect it. And if they don’t protect it, who will?”
David Attenborough, Broadcaster, Naturalist, and Writer
