In this second report from Oregon, Nick Routledge reflects upon a decade gardening with children, in conversation with Kristin Collier, a fellow gardener and mother of Trinidad (7) and Sam (4). Kristin is a steward of the international Parent Peer Leadership Program designed to support parents teaching Nonviolent Communication to others.
'As gardeners, Kristin and I are discovering that the sensitivity required to hold the needs of children, concurrently with the needs of landscape, is fertile ground for our own adult explorations of what makes for a coherent life. This interplay of wisdom-making is a touchstone particular to all cultures. Americans have the same needs as Europeans, Africans, Asians: whereas strategies and forms may differ, the needs of landscapes and peoples are ecumenical. Wherever we are then, in taking the hand of a child and stepping into a garden, we adults become schooled in ways that offer us the hope of a thriving, peaceful world. Every awakening is local: every garden, a school garden.'
