Forest gardens – new opportunities for urban children to understand and develop relationships with other organisms

Abstract

This case study explores a learning situation in a forest garden in Sweden. A forest garden is an edible polyculture landscape with different layers of mostly perennial vegetation. The forest garden is designed to maximize the yield of useful plants while minimizing the input of energy and resources, including human labour. Forest gardens may offer learning situations that contextualize interconnectedness and relations between organisms as well as situations that are beneficial for evaluative development (Kellert, 2002), i.e. the development of values, beliefs and moral perspectives in children. Twenty-seven seven to eight year old primary school children were followed in the first six months of a three year project in which they participated in developing a forest garden. The aim of the study is to investigate how the children reason with respect to different organisms' dependence on and relations to each other, themselves included. Specifically: How do the children describe their own relationships with other organisms, as well as the relationships between other organisms in the forest garden? What values of nature are expressed by the children, and in relation to which situations in the forest garden? Data were collected in the form of field notes, audio and video recordings and photos from the children's visits to the forest garden. The photos were used for stimulated recall in focus group interviews. The data were analysed using a combination of qualitative content analysis (Patton, 2002) and semi-quantitative methods. The children in the study presented a unidirectional perspective about the relationship between themselves and the organisms, especially the insects, in the forest garden. Rather than asking what these organisms can do for me/us, they pose the question: What can I/we do for the bugs/plants/ bees? This study shows that forest gardens have the potential to be places where children can connect emotionally and cognitively to other organisms.

Developing ecological literacy in a forest garden: children’s perspectives

“…Moreover, the wish to help insects and other animals in the forest garden, which was strongly pronounced in the children's expressions 2 years earlier (Askerlund & Almers, 2016) and was referred to as a humanistic value of nature (Kellert, 2002), can still be found in the interviews with some children, albeit probably less frequently. In our earlier study with younger children (Askerlund & Almers, 2016), fear about nettles was one of very few negativistic values detected in children's expression of the forest garden. This view has clearly not changed and may represent functional and adaptive benefits such as the development of respect for nature and the avoidance of harm and injury (Kellert, 2002).…”

“…The setting of this research was an educational project for children during the period 2013-2015 called 'the Stinkbug' [in Swedish: Bärfisprojektet] in Holma forest garden (Figure 1) in the south of Sweden (Almers et al, 2018;Askerlund & Almers, 2016). Inviting school classes to outdoor educational environments such as Holma is not explicitly connected to the Swedish national curriculum, although outdoor education is generally well established in the Nordic countries.…”

Drivers and Frequency of Forest Visits: Results of a National Survey in the Czech Republic

“…Nevertheless, our study presented that higher education level respondents visited the forest more often than less educated ones. Askerlund and Almers [37] reported the results of a forest garden, where urban children have opportunities to understand and develop relationships with other organisms.…”

Salutogenic Affordances and Sustainability: Multiple Benefits With Edible Forest Gardens in Urban Green Spaces

“…In allotment areas ecological knowledge is shared among gardeners and over generations (Barthel et al, 2010) and this could also be true for community-based forest gardens. Edible forest garden may also afford learning opportunities, as described by, e.g., Askerlund and Almers (2016) who studied how edible gardens could support children’s learning on ecology. When located in urban areas edible forest gardens may provide increased possibilities of interaction with the natural world, thus aiding an increased sense of connectedness to nature (Hale et al, 2011), support environmental awareness and pro-environmental behaviors (cf.…”