The first decade of a child’s life, especially the first five to six years, are generally considered an ideal period for learning. It is also a vulnerable time as well. It depends on us — parents, guardian, teachers and society — and the kind of ideas we infuse in these budding minds. Whether we inculcate love for humankind and nature, or not, strongly determines the overall outlook of that particular child. It further predicts the mindset of a budding generation and a developing society to be.

World Children’s Day is just a few days away, on November 14. The day is usually marked with seminars, exhibitions, awareness walks and press conferences, reinforcing the commitments of government and NGOs that are supposed to safeguard the rights and interests of children and to provide a creative environment for them.

Last year, I received a few queries from readers of this column, as well as followers of my social media platforms, asking how teachers and mothers can promote gardening as a hobby among their students and children.

A teacher from Peshawar wanted to do something different for his students by developing and instilling a sense of ownership in them while they prepared potted plants for their homes. Another one wanted to sow flower seeds in a school lawn with the help of his class students. He wanted to allocate different portions of the lawn to different groups, based on the alphabetical order of their names. I responded to their queries back then.

Children can learn new skills and develop self-confidence by spending time in the garden and by caring for plants

Gardening is a full-time hobby. This hobby can help develop a highly caring attitude and feelings of attachment among children and those practising it. Some hobbies do have a tendency to bring you closer to nature, such as gardening, travelling and adopting pets.

But how can these hobbies bring us more in touch with nature?

When you prepare the growing medium or the potting mix while removing all the stones — before even sowing the seeds — you are already dedicating your thought process into caring for the plant, which is not even in the world yet.

From being attentive to plants’ every need in its different growing phases, especially when it is a seedling, you are tending to it just the way we would tend to babies. Ensuring proper sunlight, following strict water quantity and schedule, maintaining different food fertilisers groups at different stages, being ready to fend off different plant diseases, infections and animals — all has striking similarities to childcare.

Not allowing even the plant to grow much and causing itself harm by getting too big for its betterment, and making difficult decisions of, sometimes, opting to remove flowers or pruning some young branches to heavy ones, are decisions about care we all make in our lives too. All of these steps of growing a plant or a robust tree are not only natural but, indeed, humane to their core.

I am vocal about adopting gardening as a hobby while using minimal resources; I always try to inspire the young generation to spend their time doing healthy, rewarding activities. You don’t always need to go to a fancy workshop being conducted at a high-end hotel or, on the contrary, start to live within a jungle and begin to eat what nature has to offer.

You can offer children simple realistic tasks, with small achievable targets. Let them sow seeds or cover those up with a layer of soil with their own hands. Let them touch the leaves and watch how a caterpillar may feed off them. The velvety touch of petals and the fragrance of flowers and, sometimes, even the sweet smell of watered-soil appeals to many. Let them help you harvest and it grows the sense of ownership, not only with nature but within family members too.

If you want to do an activity, you can provide kids with plastic pots with soil and stem of some vines that can be easily propagated and are easy-to-grow, like a money plant or purple-heart plant. They may grow it, while spending a Sunday with you and some quality few hours together.

Their priority becomes watching those plants grow and watering them, and being rewarded for their proper handling. The time spent, the activity and, sometimes, even that plant stays with them for eternity.

Please send your queries and emails to doctree101@hotmail.com. The writer is a physician and a host for the YouTube channel ‘DocTree Gardening’ promoting organic kitchen gardening

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 12th, 2023