The Garden of Eden might be a metaphor for peace and, indeed, for the whole world, but today’s gardens are shrunken images. They are lawns to highlight a property; or a pain to weed and mow; or a chance to grow unsprayed fruit and vegetables; or, for flat-dwellers, something strange they don’t want to own. But a garden can be a place of peace for everyone, including city-livers, to connect with nature and for educating children.
There are two wonderful local examples in Williamsburg.
Stonehouse Elementary School
This school in James City County started a native plant garden called Habitat in 2004, winning several awards. It is a place where children from kindergarten age through sixth grade have lessons about nature and get involved in garden care.
The garden was originally a barren plot between two wings of a building where turf struggled to put down roots into the baked clay. With the help of volunteers from the Virginia Native Plant Society, a few teachers and parents, and donations from well-wishers, it has been transformed into a rich and diverse habitat.
The project launched with the arrival of truckloads of well-rotted chicken manure and llama poo, which were dug into the ground and covered with mulch to slow erosion and evaporation in baking Virginia summers. The first seeds and small shrubs were in the ground by spring of 2005. All are native species, and most have thrived with the help of human hands and without spraying.
Native plants are more supportive of animal communities than aliens. According to Douglas Tallamy of the University of Delaware: “alien ornamentals support 29 times less biodiversity than do native ornamentals.”
A decade later, it is hard to see any bare ground between May and October. Flowers decorate the top of a multi-story profusion of greenness, and are visited by dancing insects and hovering humming birds. Barn swallows nest in the eaves under a drainpipe, and bluebirds swoop to catch insects. If you separate the foliage you are likely to see scuttling beetles and a praying mantis, and perhaps a frog or even a harmless reptile. None lived there before.
Beebalm burns scarlet, Soldier Mallow towers head-high, and Hoary Mountain Mint hosts nectar-hungry bees. Many other plants are also in full flower, making the Habitat as colorful as any ornamental garden planted with aliens, but it is far richer in life and quite free of poisons. If the leaves of violets, milkweed and Golden Alexander look chewed, we can celebrate the eaters for these are food plants for caterpillars of fritillaries, monarchs, and swallowtails. None of these butterflies were introduced artificially: when their ancestors turned up they made it a home, and for generations to come.
Surely, everyone loves butterflies. Even children growing up nervous of creepy-crawlies will soon offer them a welcoming finger for landing on to become their friend. Children are natural naturalists, and naturally inquisitive about nature. As David Attenborough said to President Obama, the challenge is keeping their interest alive when they grow up.
Williamsburg Botanic Garden
The botanic garden in Freedom Park is mainly populated by native species of the Coastal Plain. There are wetland and meadow habitats for wildflowers and grasses, as well as a green roof pavilion, and a therapy garden. It is a two-acre ellipse open to all ages.
The therapy garden is not like a physic garden of medicinally important species (a good project for the future), but a classroom for children and adults, including people with disabilities. They can get hands-on training for cultivating ornamental and food plants.
It feels good getting hands dirty in dark loam. There is something therapeutic about physically working with nature, and especially a tactile engagement en plein air. Konstantin Levin, a nobleman in one of Tolstoy’s epic stories, became “awfully fond” of hand mowing. He found it was a blissful activity that earned respect from his peasants when he shared in the haymaking.
The botanic garden has a butterfly garden with a monarch waystation where researchers attach a numbered tag to monarch wings for tracking their migration like bird banding. It draws many butterflies, bees, and other pollinators to suck nectar from the abundant flowers at this time of year. The garden also has food plants for caterpillars of some butterflies and moths, and nearby are stands of oak, birch, and sourwood that are favored by other species.
Last weekend, the garden hosted a butterfly festival. Hundreds of visitors of all ages, a few in wheelchairs, endured temperatures in the low ‘90s in the long tent so they could walk among the fluttering insects. There were hundreds of specimens from a butterfly farm, including two species of swallowtails, monarchs, viceroys, buckeyes, sulfurs, and painted ladies, and perhaps others I missed.
What a spectacle! How many more human generations will be able to enjoy the more threatened species? It was another garden opportunity against the tide of modern life that alienates us from nature.
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