The back yard of his parents’ house in Hinsdale has entirely too much grass for 12-year-old Ned Blaine.
“My friends and I can go to the park if we want to play football,” Ned told his mother the other day while pitching her and a visitor on his plan to dig up a bunch of the lawn this spring so he can double, or maybe triple, the size of his garden plot.
Part of his pitch was purely practical. As it was last summer, the garden was in two sections so far apart that each had to take a separate turn under the sprinkler. Fill much of the space between those two section with more corn, lettuce, potatoes and pumpkins, Ned reasoned, and “I can water it all at once from one sprinkler in the middle.”
Ned’s a precocious gardener; most people don’t start cutting up the lawn for more garden until they are at least old enough to vote. But he got an early start, helping his mother shoo hungry rabbits out of her garden at the age of 3. “I’d put him to work spreading mothballs under the perennials to keep bunnies away,” remembers Ned’s mother, Elizabeth Blaine. Ever since, the boy has been hooked.
Last summer, Ned’s garden really started to swing. He planted pumpkin and gourd vines near the swing set he and his two older sisters had outgrown and, at some point, realized he had a made-to-order trellis right there. The gourd vines were trained up the swing set, the pumpkins were encouraged to sprawl along the ground below it, and by the time his parents shot late-summer pictures for Home&Garden’s Glorious Gardens 99 contest, the structure was engulfed with green leaves and ripening fruit.
Ned’s vine-draped swing set set his garden apart from ordinary vegetable patches. It showed that the kitchen garden needn’t always be an orderly, visually boring production spot. A little dab of imagination made the family’s defunct swing set into a kind of living playhouse and got Ned’s garden named one of two best children’s gardens of the year.
“It’s a really good idea, and it looks like fun,” said Tim Johnson, the Chicago Botanic Garden’s director of horticulture and a Glorious Gardens 99 judge. Not only had Ned found a creative reuse for the retired swing set, but he made his own gardening more adventuresome in the processs. To pick some of the gourds, he had to leap over a tangle of vines, climb up the slide and into a dense canopy of vines, then slide down again with the harvest in his hands.
The garden appeals to Ned on other levels too. He’s a habitual counter, regularly tallying up how many gourds or other items are ripening, says his father, Greg Blaine. Ned says he likes to explore the smells of the garden too. When sorting the pumpkin vines from the gourd vines, he detected an unusual way to tell them apart: “The gourds smelled worse than the pumpkins.”
A 6th grader at St. Isaac Jogues in Hinsdale, Ned already has big plans for this summer’s garden. There is the planned expansion (not yet approved by mom and dad at press time), some raspberry canes, maybe digging a small pond–ostensibly as a favor to his mom–and perhaps most intriguing of all, the moat Ned wants to dig around the base of the birdfeeder to keep squirrels out.
“Ned doesn’t make small plans,” says his father.
WORKING WITH YOUNG GARDENERS
Gardening with children is a great way to let them explore the world of nature. Here are some insights from Hinsdale 12-year-old Ned Blaine and Blair Early Childhood Center 1st-grade teacher Barbara Freely:
– Getting dirty is good. “Teach them not to be afraid to get dirty,” Freely says. “They’re naturally curious, but some children have to be told it’s OK to dig in.”
– Water is good. “If you want to grow big things, water them a lot,” Ned Blaine advises. He monitors the weather all summer, watering his vegetables for 30 minutes every day if no rain is forecast.
– Patience is good. Even if it takes longer, letting children execute gardening tasks is well worth the time, says Freely. Gardening at their own pace, children learn the fundamental pleasures of the soil. “And it’s time the teacher isn’t demanding their attention,” Freely says. “Gardening holds their attention.”
– Let them make mistakes. Let kids learn for themselves. The first year he grew gourds, Ned was sure the vines couldn’t possibly support the heavy fruit, so he devised wood platforms and other supports to protect his produce. His parents both knew better but didn’t breathe a word. Lo and behold, the vines easily supported everything they generated.
– Growing independence. Providing access to the plants and soil is not just a practical thing, Freely says. “Just putting things where they can reach makes them feel so independent,” she explains. Planned improvements for the school garden include a wall of shelf-top gardens sited so children in wheelchairs can roll up and have the garden suspended above their laps.
– Getting familiar. Ned Blaine’s mom, Elizabeth, studiously labels all her shrubs and perennials. “The kids see the names and they kind of soak in,” she says. Familiarity, she believes, breeds both curiosity about plants and concern for their welfare.
