When I was growing up, a garden was plants - and almost entirely food at that, other than the border of marigolds that were supposed to keep the rabbits out and the weeds we grudgingly picked. I've been watching my own daughters interact with our gardens this summer and have been amazed at their independent curiosity and creativity. In the process I've learned, right along with them, that a garden is much, much more than plants.

Our garden is a sanctuary. Birds visit our pond for refreshment during hot summer days. Butterflies visit our flowers to fulfill their biological destiny of spreading pollen. Bugs, slugs and worms work their own magic, whether it be good or evil. While my daughters love watching the plants - picking the flowers and food - they have spent countless hours scavenging for other life forms.

They look under rocks to find beetles and slugs.


They gleefully hold their prized (temporary) prisoners (in this case, slugs - one of which fell off my daughter’s hand and almost down the front of my shirt. Boy, did they get a laugh out of my shriek of fear.)



They’ve also taken a "dead zone” of our beds and turned it into a fairy village. I came up with the idea, but they've taken it far beyond what I imagined. It's been a space hidden in shade behind their play house, in poor soil that simply nothing wants to live in - no matter how hard we try. This year I threw up my hands and decided to incorporate natural material we’d gathered from hiking to create an inviting space for fairies. Even if the fairies don't show up, they've drawn faces on rocks to populate the village with little stone citizens.


It has become a very natural (and more imaginative) version of Legos. And, we keep adding to it with new twigs and bark and rocks and such that we find on our very regular nature hikes.


This new perspective of gardening beyond plants has been extraordinary - one of many moments in my children's lives that they have been my teachers. I feel like as we age we get these very clear, focused lenses on life, like looking through a microscope or binoculars. We get so used to seeing life in this way, we forget the grand landscape that exists outside our restricted view. But, life is diversity and every single moment and molecule is tied to so many others. We miss everything by focusing on a simple something.

I don't see our garden as simply plants anymore. Now, I see everything - the food, the flowers, the bugs, the slugs, the ant colonies, the dirt, the rocks, the intentional architecture, the natural chaos - an entire planetary microcosm.

You can read more from Janelle at Healthy Child Healthy World, follow her on Twitter at @greenandhealthy, and find her on Facebook.