I hate when my daughters or wife bring home brownies or cookies or anything that tests my fairly weak resolve. I used to believe that my need to act like the Cookie Monster and gobble any available sweets without abandon was just another one of my many character flaws. But wonderfully I found that not to be the case as research from Dr. David Kessler shows. His new book, which was recently written up in the New York Times, discusses how the food industry has cracked the nut on how to entice us to inhale as much of their products as possible.
It’s stuff like this that is a constant challenge when working with young children in the garden. It can seem like an insurmountable task to get them to appreciate the nuances of different types of mints or try a simple chive when you are competing against a Snickers bar. But that has to be part of any gardening or horticultural-therapy program to help illustrate that all the weeding, composting, watering, planting, weeding, thinning, weeding, tilling, weeding is worth it at the end. We need to connect the end result with all of the earlier steps.
That is why when you work to create a garden, it should be diverse, wild and have lots of things that astound the senses. It’s not just about growing a hollyhock or marigold or tomato. It’s about growing weird and uncommon stuff like cosmic purple carrots, Chinese red noodle beans or striped roman tomatoes that will excite and astound anyone who walks in the garden and takes more than just a simple glance. But visually interesting plants and fruits are just the first step. Because at the end of the day if you are working with vegetables or certain flowers you want to get your charges to eat the garden. You want them to channel their inner rabbit. Feed me.
That’s one of the things Tracy Chamberlin (the horticultural therapist I trained under) does very well at Green Chimneys. After working with her classes or individuals she takes the children “shopping” throughout the garden. We have just finished harvesting all of the asparagus and have started to thin the carrots. For children who are unaccustomed or unfamiliar with fresh-out-of-the-garden vegetables, it is a wonderful transformation to watch. Most will try anything and their first attempts are pensive and slow. But their faces soon brighten up when they chomp down on their first asparagus that was cut 60 seconds ago. Soon they become veggie Cookie Monsters wanting to consume as much of the field as will be allowed.
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The string-like structures of the carrots have a sweet but barely discernable taste; but the kids really like nibbling away at what they can pull. Chives and their flowers have a very different flavor. But it is the strong tastes that keep them coming and going. They love sorrel and gooseberries. I can barely stand the astringent and sour taste of both of these crops. Kids at Green Chimneys will pop a dozen gooseberries into their mouth if you let them. Garlic scapes are coming into their own now and it is funny to see how the expression of the children change when they first bite into one. You do a silent count in your head and when you get to “. . .three Mississippi,” their face explodes with the realization that they have bitten into an intense tangy, hot thing. Some keep chomping, others look to drink a trough of water. But like many of our crops, we need to ration them or our fields would be stripped by a large version of T-shirt-wearing locusts.
All of these things combine to keep the garden interesting and stimulate the senses. The children all keep coming back looking forward to the next harvest and getting that one extra gooseberry.
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