Sending Kids Back to Nature

In such a setting, nature may be taught rather than simply absorbed and enjoyed, but Louv applauds these efforts anyway. "We don't have much choice but to structure the unstructured experience in nature," he said in an interview from his home in San Diego.

A study released earlier this year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids between 8 and 18 now spend on average 6.3 hours a day with media, mostly the television, personal computers, video games and music devices. Seventh- to 12th-graders surveyed spent another 53 minutes on the phone.

But the other side of the coin -- programmed time for excessive homework, sports and other achievement pursuits -- is also robbing children of quiet, unhurried time to contemplate their world or build relationships.

"It goes back to parental anxiety, an almost non-acceptance of the child's inherent nature and [an attempt] to convert them into some accomplishment machine," said Alvin Rosenfeld, a child psychiatrist in New York and Greenwich, Conn.

Another hurdle, of course, is the parental anxiety about child stalkers on every corner.

"Part of the reason we built this," said Robinson, "is because it's a place where the parents felt it was safe and where the kids could have fun." A decade in the making, it opened Sept. 24.

Such attractions have sprouted across the country. The Enchanted Woods at Winterthur Museum near Wilmington, Del., opened four years ago as a three-acre oak forest where children could play with imagined sprites and fairies. And a new and much larger children's garden will open in early 2007 as part of the rebuilding of the East Conservatory at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa.

Norfolk Botanical Garden is planning to open its three-acre children's garden, World of Wonders, next September. Like the new Richmond garden, it will have areas for playing and learning, and for exploring gardening and farming traditions in different cultures. (Indeed, Robinson said one of the aims of the Lewis Ginter attraction is to bring more minority and immigrant families to an institution that has traditionally appealed to affluent whites.)

Ironically, botanical gardens have been historically hostile to young children, who are feared as destructive creatures that run roughshod over planting beds and pluck flowers.

"The whole point of a children's garden is to do all the things you can't do in a botanical garden -- touch things, smell things, get dirty, get wet, climb through things and make noise," said Linda Candler, director of development and marketing at the Norfolk garden.

She anticipates that the attraction will increase the current 220,000 visitors a year by another 50,000. But if these gardens for children and their parents are the new zoos, there's a major difference.

"When you take your child to the zoo it's easy for a parent to say: 'Here's an elephant, here's a tiger.' But at a botanical garden they don't know the plants," said Ann Parsons, the Norfolk garden's director of education. The children's gardens lift that burden.

In an ideal world, perhaps, parents would have enough space, time, knowledge, interest and money to create a home garden where their children could lose themselves and find a connection to the environment. Many do, and Louv thinks it would be great for parents to let their yards get a bit wild and allow their kids to build little elements for the imagination. But, "there's a fine line between expecting more from parents and burdening parents."

And Parsons notes that many children who visit the Norfolk garden live in apartments.

The children's garden phenomenon may have a short-term need to draw in kids and their parents, but there is a long-term interest at play, too, said Robinson.

"If these children don't understand that these plants sustain us, who's going to take care of our food?" he said. "Who's going to be worried about preservation of land or species, or understanding the cycles of nature and the impact they have on us?"