Clockwise from left: Twins Aiden and Owen Wells, 8, check the progress of some pepper plants at the New Hanover County Arboretum.
Sarah and Luke Smith, 7 and 9, pick cherry tomatoes. Lexi Lopez, Luke Smith and Rachel Smith, all graduates of the Junior Master Gardener
program, show off some of the vegetables grown at the New Hanover County Arboretum.
“It gives them a sense of community.
They start to feel that they have something
to contribute…something to give back.”
And that, she says, is something to see.
Helene Icard, lead teacher at Parents’
Community Preschool for more than
twenty years, says that garden education is
essential to the curriculum. In the fall, children
delight in the swamp sunflowers and
flowering camellias and decorate their classroom
with their explosive blooms. During
the winter in the preschool’s garden, the
students observe birds that visit feeders suction
cupped to classroom windows. They
care for plants in their terrarium where they
witness the life cycle of butterflies, praying
mantes and ladybugs. And in late winter,
they start the seeds that will constitute their
spring and summer garden.
“It’s important for kids to see things
growing,” Icard says, “For them to learn
that plants need taking care of.”
Icard adds that while she encourages
nature-based play in every way possible,
most of the children’s garden exploration
occurs organically. On a typical spring day,
children can be found filling watering cans
from the school’s rain barrel, picking sweet
peas from the vine, munching on lettuce
and sucking the nectar out of honeysuckle.
Garden soil is mixed with water to form
mud soup and is garnished with a sprinkling
of vegetation.
Icard, known as “Teacher Helene” to her
students, says that she can see the children’s
faces change when they’re delighted by
nature’s offerings. Carrying handfuls of
camellias, noticing that a seed is about to
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sprout, or biting down on a crispy snap pea
gives them a satisfied glow.
She says that their desire to participate in
the natural world is contagious. Some PCP
parents say that the very same glow has
been known to appear on Icard’s face when
offered a bowl of mud soup, or receiving a
bouquet of swamp sunflowers.
After all, as Teacher Helene is fond of
saying, “It’s only natural.”