Youngsters tend their kitchen gardens at Government House
Government House is the site of a new gardening programme launched for area primary schools and geared to help youngsters shun gang involvement.Governor George Fergusson’s wife Margaret described the programme and its establishment at the annual lady’s lunch at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club.“Government House sits in beautiful grounds and at its back gate there is an uneasy territorial boundary between two of Bermuda’s gangs. You don’t have to be privy to the secret police reports to know where the main incidents take place or a genius to realise that a small number of individuals are challenging the rest of society,” she said.“How should the rest of us react? How can we prevent the values of the gang culture from becoming the values of Bermuda’s children?“It has to be by example, by cooperation across all sorts of agencies, by identifying individuals who are at risk and offering alternatives to the rules of the gang.”Mrs Fergusson said she chose to “comment on something so awkward” because the time she and her husband will live here is a long period in a child’s life.“[It’s] long enough for loyalties to be established, patterns of behaviour to be seen as normal,” she explained. “We have to seize back the initiative, change the norms that are being passed on in schools and then support the changes.”Mrs Fergusson, a former primary school teacher, explained said started with “three kitchen gardens in the ground of Government House”.“Each of the three primary schools that are closest to us, Victor Scott, Northlands and West Pembroke, each now has a garden in the grounds,” she said.“Each week ten to 12 students from each school come for two hours.”She said volunteers from the Garden Club of Bermuda help, as do the gardeners from Government House and the Parks Department.“Above all, the children are really engaged and interested and already quite knowledgeable. There is such experience of kitchen gardens out there and it has been wonderful to see that expertise — about weeds and bugs as much as about plants and soil — being passed on to the next generation.”She continued: “I am really thrilled that this has got off the ground and enormously grateful to the teaching staff who took it on and to my wonderful volunteers who make it work.”
The Children and Nature Network has this to say about how children benefit from gardening:Those who garden are more accepting of others who are different from themselves, a finding consistent with research that indicates that community gardening projects ‘grow’ a community.Children who grow their own food are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables and to show higher levels of knowledge about nutrition. They are also more likely to continue healthy eating habits throughout their life. Eating fruits and vegetables in childhood has been shown to be an important predictor of higher fruit and vegetable consumption in adulthood, which can help prevent or delay chronic disease conditions over a lifetime.Students who are actively engaged in garden projects tend to enjoy learning and show improved attitudes towards school. Third, fourth and fifth grade students who participated in school gardening activities scored significantly higher on science achievement tests than students who did not experience any garden-based learning activities.Parent involvement, shown to enhance student achievement, increases at schools with gardening.Active gardening, such as picking flowers or planting trees as a child, has been shown to have a strong influence on how natural areas and gardens are valued in adulthood.Exposure to healthy foods, moderate physical activity, and positive social interactions while gardening in childhood can lead to a lifetime of gardening.Useful website: www.childrenandnature.org
