OF GARDENS AND GARDENERS

Planting and Communion

In the third week of March, according to our yearly ritual, the teachers at The Living Ethics School brought wheelbarrows of soil, bags of worm castings and bean and squash seeds to the children’s play yard. The teachers readied stacks of planting pots, trowels and seed packages, and lined up trays to house the pots close by. The children gathered around eager to plant the first seeds for the spring garden.

As the adults explained about the earthworm casting nutrients for the baby plants, the children helped stir it into the soil. Then each filled a pot with the prepared soil to welcome the seed.

Our rule of gardener’s thumb is that the sensitive gardener establishes a relationship of tender appreciation and reverence for the nature and the gifts of each seed he plants.

Aware that energy exchanges connect all living beings, the adults modeled tenderly holding and speaking to each seed. Knowing the power of gratitude, the planters thanked each seed for the fruit it would produce before placing it in the little hole in the pot. Knowing the value of a sense of wonder to enrich life, the adult planters expressed their amazement that from each tiny seed would come nourishing food and many more seeds.

Cultivating the Soil

Gardeners know the foundational importance of feeding the soil. While the seeds sprout in the greenhouse, the gardener ascertains that the garden soil is rich in macronutrients and micronutrients –compost, potash, minerals, etc. to feed the micro-organisms that will help feed the tender seedlings. Biodynamic and organic gardeners appreciate the differences between living soil and lab-concocted soils filled with vermiculite and requiring chemical fertilizers. A handful of living soil in one hand and lifeless soil in the other tells all.

Similarly, gardeners of human seedlings know the foundational importance of optimal nutrition for children. Fresh produce grown in nutrient-rich living soil feeds them best, while processed food products laden with coloring, nitrates, 4-5 syllable chemicals and/or sugar feed them least. A year in the life of each child through flu, cold, and allergy seasons reveals much.

 Planting Seedlings

By mid April the adult and child planters marveled at the earthworms in the garden while digging planting holes. Again tender care, expressions of appreciation and a sense of wonder blessed the planting of each seedling.

Experienced gardeners note that the baby plants respond exuberantly to leaving the hothouse pots to be placed in the garden. Quickly, the seedlings rooted in the garden out-distance same-age counterparts remaining in the greenhouse.

Because of temperature sensitivities different members of the Plant Kingdom sprout earlier or later in spring. Radishes, peas and potatoes require earlier planting than beans, squash, tomatoes and corn.

Experienced gardeners of child gardens know the same is true for the human seedlings. For example, distinct individual proclivities determine readiness for academics. One child may learn to read at 4, and another at 8. By the time they are 12, given that each loves to read, their intelligence cultivated in a biodynamic, child-responsive environment, they are likely to both be reading at the same level with ease.

Rainclouds of Potential

Gardeners observe that garden plants respond differently to water from rainstorms than hose water. While water from hoses promotes measurable growth, dynamically charged rainwater induces profuse growth.

Similarly, rainclouds of ideas charged with attractive potentials water child gardens with novelty, meaning and creativity for a profusion of growth.

The future date approaches when schooling hot houses are only historical accounts of a failed experiment; and the proliferation of two-dimensional tests is only a relic of early 21^st century ignorance.

When the world’s children are thriving in organic child gardens; when generations take root in curricular soil that feeds the soul, watered by rainclouds of adult creativity, insight, and responsiveness—then will rainbow hues of bright-eyed enthusiasm, joy, and passionate, self-driven learning bless human seedlings. At last, the gardeners of human potentials will cultivate and celebrate bountiful harvests of multi-dimensional genius.