About

Youth Climate Action Educational Garden built by Chloe Smith

My project began with a prior idea to create an educational garden space for community groups, such as the Girls Scouts, who I have partnered with here. Even though I had this idea for building an education garden for some years – it wasn’t until May of this year that I was approached by a Brownie troop leader, who had an established, but in poor condition, plot at the Zinsser community garden. It was also shared with me, there was a possibility of applying to the Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund, all of which seemed too perfect. This was simply an amazing opportunity to put into action an old idea of mine, which was to create a local garden primarily for children. I feel not only lucky, but grateful for everything that permitted my idea to become reality.

A space such as the one I have created permits both children and adults to learn about plants and how they benefit the environment. The totality of the garden project has been built and designed with many distinctive, yet cohesive parts.

In the garden space, the perimeter portion of the garden (which consists of the numerous stepped planting boxes seen below), will permit children to learn about how pollinator plants and native plants are crucial to maintaining the balance in any ecosystem. The pollinator portion of the garden will help to stabilize and balance the local environment, leading to the plants in the surrounding areas to thrive. This is because attracting a greater amount of pollinators to the area is going to allow those same pollinators to help the native plants produce and reproduce seeds, continuing the life cycle of local plants. Without sufficient pollinators, the native and interior garden plants would be unable to thrive and reproduce, causing the plants to essentially die. The role of native and interior garden plants is to provide excess nectar and pollen to the pollinators, resulting in the local native plants that require less resources be able to thrive. Native plants also help stabilize the environment as they contribute to healthy air quality and prevent run-off. Overall, in having the pollinator portion of the garden, children can learn not only about the concepts above, but also about the basic level of gardening and food systems, as it serves as an introduction to teach about crops and/or how pollen affects the growth system of more than just our local native plants. That said, my prior idea for an educational garden was not only to create a standard perimeter pollinator garden, but also to create an interior sensory garden.

The interior sensory garden portion of the garden is where one’s senses can be stimulated and exercised, allowing for a more personal experience. In this part of the garden (primarily the four interior planting boxes and arbor seen in the photos below), you are not restricted to just looking (various plantings and a wind-spinner), but you are feeling (the texture of diverse plantings), smelling (the aromas of diverse plantings), and even hearing (via the use of varied materials used for the walking areas and windchimes hanging from the arbor). For visiting children, the sensory garden is a tool to experience the physical/non-virtual world with a number of their senses, while also spending time outside the constraints of an indoor classroom, or an electronic device. These gardens not only appeal to different senses, but they encourage students to be observant of the elements that the plants and other items in the garden contain. “They help children develop important life skills including emotional regulation and self-reliance.(Austin-Benefits of a Sensory Garden), this article goes in depth to describe how children having a role in the garden helps this development, and how sensory gardens are essential in this. This, along with other factors, such as the fact I am a Girl Scout myself, are the reasons why I am fortunate to have been given a Brownie troop plot to construct, as I created a larger role for them outside the pollinator and sensory garden with the addition of an exterior learning space.

The exterior learning space is forward-looking to the future for use as an area for any troop to pursue any badges and achievements they are working towards, or for any Hastings resident to sit and potentially spend some time learning. This is because (as can be seen in the photos below), the fixed benches create a designated area that mimics a traditional classroom set up.  The same fixed benches can be supplemented by two movable benches that will be available for groups as well. Whereas, the full-time educational aspects of the exterior space is designed to be accessible to all who spectate the garden, specifically in the form of an informational kiosk (which will be placed to the right of the fixed benches), as well as a website that will be reachable from a posted QR code inside the kiosk.