Connecting kids with nature

Some say that our preoccupation with electronic data sources comes at a cost, including youngsters who can rattle off the storylines of video game series but can’t identify a robin in their own backyard or explain that frogs start out as tadpoles.

The staff at the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center (NFBIC), sponsor a website for educators called the Bulb Project (www.thebulbproject.org). The interactive website gives educators, youth group leaders and home schoolers a forum for the exchange of ideas and a growing library of learning activities that use flower bulbs to connect young people and nature.

For family projects, it’s suggested that parents start with a family meeting where everyone in the family has a say about what their planting or building project should be.

The Internet needn’t be demonized. It is in fact a terrific resource for all kinds of gardening information.

Sites such as the Backyard Gardener (www.backyardgardener.com), the gardening section of About.com (http://gardening.about.com) and the National Gardening association. (www.garden.org/home) have lots of interesting basic gardening information.

NFBIC has a web site (www.bulb.com) with lots of flower bulb information, plus a new web site, www.bulbvideo.com, that offers short simple how-to videos on planting flower bulbs. Assigning the young people, masters of the virtual world, to tracking things down on the Web can help keep their interest.

A visit to a local garden retailer, or the gardening section of a mass-market retailer offers a tactile, hands-on experience where bulbs, trees and shrubs can be touched and smelled. If you buy some hyacinth bulbs and cut one open, you can clearly see the fully formed baby flower inside just waiting to emerge next spring. "Most people, including youth, get excited about gardening when they get to 'direct traffic' a bit more, so to speak," says Marcia Eames-Sheavly, an expert in horticultural education who serves as educational coordinator for www.thebulbproject.org. "Young people who are encouraged to take ownership of a project are more involved, they learn more and retain more -- and they're more likely to want to repeat the experience."