To many, a garden evokes the simple and beautiful memories of flowers in front of large cascading green plants while strains of either Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony or Vivaldi’s Four Seasons lingers in the background. And while these visions can be true, they are often counterbalanced by inordinate hours of backbreaking work that are better accompanied by this tune.
So one of the challenges of any horticultural-therapy program for children is to either match hard jobs with the right child or mix the picking of tomatoes with the use of the pickaxe to break up soil. Today we need to finish laying down a 4-by-4 edging as well as an aggregate base around our recently constructed raised beds.
The raised beds have really expanded the garden for us and made it much more accessible. Prior to these beds, we basically had a patch of mud and weeds that did not drain and the children did not want to enter. Now with grading, new beds and paths, it has become a welcoming environment that the children are happy to enter and garden within.
Luckily, all the children I had today were in the need and spirit of a good workout. When I first meet a child I try to gauge their temperament: happy, sad, bored, manic, morose, etc. to see how the planned task of the day will work. Some times I need to sit quietly with them and get them to unload some of their problems before we start. Or just get them talking. I find that a extra few minutes of attention before any activity goes a long way in making the child comfortable with whatever is planned during the day.
My first student, A., is very good when it comes to problem solving. What we first needed to do was to cut an edge from an adjoining bed so we could place the timbers in a straight line. I had A. eyeball how much we needed to cut off and then I etched a line in the soil. We both dug the dirt out and put it into a wheelbarrow to haul away.
A. works well in this type of environment. He like the physical activity and was sad when I first picked him up from class. He had just come back from vacation and didn’t have a good time. But digging and hauling away dirt took him away from from his sadness and within 10 minutes or so he was happy and engaged in the garden. He found solace in using a flat spade and cutting a precise line so that the rails would fit well into a space of his own design.
A. particularly liked to smooth out the soil so that the timbers would rest evenly upon the ground. Between the two of us, we were able to dig out all we needed and place the timbers in a neat line, ready for the next student.
B. was ready for heavy-duty physical activity. We first dropped landscaping fabric to slow the grow of weeds and then took our wheelbarrow to a pile of aggregate when we both dug in with our shovels. B. would tell me when to stop filling the wheelbarrow and test it by attempting to lift it. He is a strong kid and I showed him how to use his legs rather than back as he attempted to pick it up.
B. likes when I make voices up like Bugs Bunny or the Cookie Monster. It was one of the mechanisms that I discovered early that broke the ice between us. For our hour together we talked about school, sports and the games we liked. We took a few breaks, but worked steadily and talked for the most part of our time together.
My last child, C., is one of my more active kids in that he is hard to control; in many ways he is pure Id. So I often try to do physical activities with him that will release his inner tensions (as well as tire him out constructively.) I don’t get as much done with C. as I do my other students, but we are able to connect.
I have to stop him from violently hitting the pile of aggregate with a shovel and focus more on putting the stones into a wheelbarrow. A bribe of gooseberries at the end of a successful set of chores calms him down for about 10 minutes so we can finish the job. C. takes a rake and smoothes the aggregate out. We have completed the job and he seems happy about finishing early enough so he can grab the few remaining gooseberries that are left on our bushes.
