A CHILD ’ S WORLD

| by Susan J. Owens

the green bean

Worms and little boys thrive in the shelter of leafy vines. Here’s how to grow your own edible fort.

Opposite:

A hidden leafy

green bean bower in full bloom

A cobalt-blue glass bottle sits in the

bottom of my jewelry box. Te bottle no longer carries the traces of clayey soil that once lined the ridges around its top, but when I hold it, my memory still catches the scent of earth. I found the bottle—or, more accurately, my mother found it, the day she turned the soil to plant my rock garden. She lined the edges of the garden with morning roses, which, she said, would open up to greet me every morning. Te bot- tle—a relic of a pharmacy that had stood on our property decades ago and had burned to the ground—was part of a buried trove of bottles of cobalt-blue and amber glass. Te big bottles didn’t survive; the tiny ones, only about an inch tall, remained remarkably intact. While I found only three or four of these bottles during my entire childhood, they were enough to forever equate in my mind the smell of earth with the smell of treasure.

A

mothering | May–June 2010 | digital bonus

Not enough children now have the luxury

of mining the earth for treasures—too much emphasis today is on hand sanitizers, video games, and organized sports. Dirt is something to be avoided. Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, Chief of the Division of gastroenterology and hepatol- ogy at Tuſts New England Medical Center, in Boston, said in an article in the New York Times: “Children raised in an ultraclean envi- ronment are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”1

Some researchers suggest

that when children play in dirt, they more easily develop healthy immune systems. Parents looking for a way to get their kids’

hands in the dirt need look no further than gardening—especially gardening that involves growing an edible fort. Gardening teaches children early how to care for and harness the earth’s abundant resources. It teaches them to

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