Why forest gardening for children? Swedish forest garden educators' ideas, purposes, and experiences

ABSTRACT

Utilizing forest gardens as urban settings for outdoor environmental education in Sweden is a new practice. These forest gardens combine qualities of a forest, e.g., multi-layered polyculture vegetation, with those of a school garden, such as accessibility and food production. The study explores both the perceived qualities of forest gardens in comparison to other outdoor settings and forest garden educators' ideas, purposes, and experiences of activities in a three-year forest gardening project with primary school children. The data were collected through interviews and observations and analyzed qualitatively. Four reported ideas were to give children opportunities to: feel a sense of belonging to a whole; experience self-regulation and systemic dependence; experience that they can co-create with non-human organisms; and imagine possible transformation of places. Four pedagogical forest garden features are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Forest garden
• outdoor environmental education
• school garden
• sustainability
• systemic thinking

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Robert Lecusay, Jönköping, Sweden and the anonymous reviewers for useful comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript.

Note

Notes

1. Becoming as a phenomenological concept refers to existence, not as static, but in a process of transcending itself to fulfill one's possibilities. Payne (2012) introduced ecobecoming as a non-antropocentric “end-in-view for environmental education” (p. 425).